Bing was the big gainer in year-over-year search activity, picking up 29% more searches in 2010 than it did in 2009. But Google, despite already having a huge lead in the market, also picked up 13% more searches last year. Those numbers, and many others, are part of comScore’s “2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review” report, which was just announced today.
ComScore says the US search market overall rose by 12% last year. The number of people using search was up 4% and the number of searches per searcher rose by 8% compared to 2009. Some of the data in the report recaps the monthly metrics that comScore shares, but with the added comparison to 2009. That includes the year-end market share for the major search engines, a chart that suggests Bing’s market share is on the rise, but not at Google’s expense.
Both Google and Bing reached their highs for the year in December, 2010, at 66.6% and 12%, respectively.
Of course, the search landscape changed dramatically in 2010 with Bing starting to power search on Yahoo. And Google continues to provide search results to AOL and others. By the end of the year, comScore says Google’s overall share of core searches neared 70%, while Bing was at 24%.
The comScore report also closely mirrors other recent studies related to the most popular search terms in the US in 2010, with Facebook being the runaway leader as the most-used search term of the year. Ebay and Netflix were the top two keywords in terms of generating paid search clicks, comScore says.
The list of popular organic search terms is similar to what Experian Hitwise reported just before the new year.
You can request a copy of the comScore year-in-review report from the company’s website.
Related Topics: Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Stats: comScore | Stats: Popularity | Top News
Why else would Google leave Yahoo alone (for now) and go after Bing!?