Google holds share as search queries leap 41 per cent

ComScore's global search market study found Google sites attracted significantly more searches than any of its competitors, with more than 76 billion searches being conducted through Google in July, more than two-thirds of all queries.

Yahoo! remains a distant second, with 8.9 billion searches (7.8 per cent), followed by Chinese search engine Baidu with 8 billon searches and a 7 per cent share.

Most of the top search properties worldwide experienced significant growth in search query volume versus last year, with Russian search engine Yandex growing at the fastest rate (94 per cent) among the top ten.

Microsoft's search, which incorporates its new engine Bing, also increased by 41 per cent.

Significantly, Facebook was also able to crack the top ten, registering nearly 900 million searches of its own, at a growth rate of 18 per cent on the year.

Europe accounted for the highest share of searches at 32 per cent, followed by Asia-Pacific (31 per cent) and North America (22 per cent).

Latin America exhibited the heaviest search behaviour per person with an average of 13 search usage days in July and 130 searches per web user.

Europe had the second highest overall search volume per person (117 searches per searcher) while North America exhibited the second heaviest frequency (12.5 search usage days per searcher).