US search market lead held by Google

21/07/2008

New comScore statistics have revealed that Google kept hold of its lead in the search engine market in the US during June, which may indicate a need for search optimisation efforts to be focused on Google sites.

About 61.5 per cent of the 11.5 billion queries conducted at the core search engines in June took place on Google sites, down from 61.8 per cent in May, comScore said. YouTube saw a significant 15 per cent increase in searches.

The figures also showed that Yahoo! and Microsoft made gains during the month, with a market share of 20.9 per cent and 9.2 per cent respectively. Microsoft's MSN/Windows Live property did particularly well, boosting search volumes by 15 per cent.

Ask.com accounted for 4.3 per cent of all US searches, while AOL was responsible for 4.1 per cent of the market, comScore indicated.

Meanwhile, Google has been named as the UK's top consumer superbrand by the Superbrands Council. The search engine took the top spot for the first time after placing third last year.