Internet research firm comScore has released new figures looking at the most popular search engines worldwide. Unsurprisingly, Google topped global search charts with 37.1 billion (5 billion via YouTube) searches in August, nearly five times its nearest competitor Yahoo with 8.5 billion searches.
This was the first time comScore evaluated online search activities on a worldwide basis, according to the company, revealing that most of the search activity happens in the Asia-Pacific region, which includes countries such as China, Japan and India. It also highlights that the large number of Chinese internet users has made the Chinese language search engine Baidu surpass Microsoft and rank third in the global internet search business with 3.2 billion searches. Microsoft's websites came in fourth with 2.1 billion searches, trailed by Korea's Naver.com with 2 billion searches worldwide.
"Seeing Asian search engines like China's Baidu.com and Korea's NHN ranked alongside Google and Yahoo underscores the fact that search has become a truly global phenomenon," said Bob Ivins, executive vice president of international markets at comScore.
You can read the full press release, including both the top 10 search properties and worldwide search by region charts, at comScore's website.