November Search Engine Rankings from comScore

We’ve been waiting rather impatiently for the November search engine rankings, as the figures include three months of Google’s Instant Search impact as well as the third month of “powered by” reporting, which is meant to address the reach and market share of our two main search providers: Google and Bing.

The first set of comScore’s rankings are based on “explicit core search results,” which means comScore counts any search that was conducted where a specific intent to interact with the results exists. About as clear as mud, right? What this basically means is that comScore’s search engine rankings exclude search for the sake of search.

The Numbers

In the month of November 2010, comScore found more than 16 billion explicit core searches were conducted. Not so surprisingly, Google sites ranked first with 10.6 billion searches. Yahoo! sites came in second with 2.6 billion, and Microsoft sites came in third with 1.9 billion.

Concerning the nearly 17.8 billion queries that made up the “total U. S. Core Search” in November, Google accounted for 11.4 billion, Yahoo! came in at 3.4 billion, and Microsoft finished out the top three at 2.0 billion.

As for the “powered by” rankings, which represent comScore’s best attempt at accurately defining the ever-evolving search engine landscape? Search powered by Google’s sites accounted for almost 70% of organic search results, while Bing’s entities accounted for 23.5%.

Decrease in Overall Searches

One interesting statistic to note is the decrease in search queries from October 2010 to November 2010. Overall, the number of explicit and total core search queries fell by 4%. However, compared to comScore’s search engine rankings from November 2009, the total number of searches is up considerably from 14.4 billion searches. So if this isn’t a seasonal irregularity, what could have caused the drop over the last 30 days? The effects of Google Instant? Social media search on sites such as Facebook and Twitter?

What do you think? Visit Rosemont Media’s Facebook profile or Twitter page and share your thoughts. Then, check back with the Rosemont Review as we further breakdown the comScore report, discuss the potential effects the results may have on the aesthetic healthcare market, and address the report from Microsoft showing Bing has 90 million users and has grown by nearly 50% since its launch.