Bing Searches Increase 5% in January 2010, According to Hitwise

February 17, 2010 — Experian Hitwise has announced that Google accounted for 71.49 percent of all US searches conducted in the four weeks ending Jan. 31, 2010. Yahoo! Search, Bing, and Ask.com received 14.57 percent, 9.37 percent and 2.64 percent, respectively. The remaining 65 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.93 percent of US searches.

Percentage of US Searches Among Leading Search Engine Providers
Domain	December 2009	January 2010	Month-over-month percentage change
www.google.com	72.25%	71.49%	-1%
search.yahoo.com	14.83%	14.57%	-2%
www.bing.com*	8.92%	9.37%	5%
www.ask.com	2.54%	2.64%	4%
Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Jan. 2, 2010, and Jan. 31, 2010) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users. Figures are for Web searches only.
*This includes executed searches on Bing.com but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.
Source: Experian Hitwise

Longer Searches Increase This Past Month

Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, were up 5 percent between December 2009 and January 2010. Searches of eight or more words increased 6 percent. The same time period showed that shorter search queries - those averaging one to four words long - were down 1 percent from month to month. Searches of one word comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 23.67 percent of all queries.

Percentage of US Clicks by Number of Keywords
Subject	December 2009	January 2010	Month-over-month percentage change
One word	24.34%	23.67%	-3%
Two words	23.41%	22.99%	-2%
Three words	20.32%	20.33%	0%
Four words	13.79%	14.04%	2%
Five words	8.02%	8.32%	4%
Six words	4.37%	4.57%	5%
Seven words	2.37%	2.50%	5%
Eight or more words	3.38%	3.58%	6%
Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Jan. 2, 2010, and Jan. 31, 2010) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users.
Source: Experian Hitwise

Google Is Greatest Source of Traffic to Key US Industries; Bing Sees Continued Growth to Verticals

Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing January 2010 with December 2009, Automotive, Business and Finance, Entertainment, News and Media, Shopping, Social Networking, and Sports categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

Among the top three search engines, Google sent the most visits to the four categories below. Google's percentage of upstream traffic grew for the Automotive, Shopping and Travel categories. Bing saw double-digit growth among all four categories, including a 94 percent increase in the Health category.

Percentage of US Upstream Traffic from Search Engines Among Verticals
	Google			Yahoo! Search			Bing**
Domain	Jan. 2009	Jan. 2010	Year-over-year percentage change	Jan. 2009	Jan. 2010	Year-over-year percentage change	Jan. 2009	Jan. 2010	Year-over-year percentage change
Automotive	19.45%	22.54%	16%	4.51%	4.05%	-10%	1.33%	2.51%	89%
Health	32.52%	32.29%	-1%	6.54%	4.80%	-27%	1.82%	3.52%	94%
Shopping	17.71%	19.93%	13%	4.16%	3.62%	-13%	1.24%	2.28%	84%
Travel	27.07%	29.50%	9%	5.14%	4.10%	-20%	1.91%	2.89%	51%
Note: Data is based on monthly upstream traffic from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users. Figures are for Web searches only.
**This includes executed searches on Bing.com, Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.
Source: Experian Hitwise

About Experian Hitwise

Experian Hitwise is a leading online competitive intelligence service. Experian Hitwise gives marketers a competitive advantage by providing daily insights on how 25 million Internet users around the world interact with more than one million websites. This external view helps companies grow and protect their businesses by identifying threats and opportunities as they develop. Experian Hitwise has more than 1,500 clients across numerous sectors, including financial services, media, travel and retail. Experian Hitwise (FTS:EXPN), www.experianplc.com, operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada and Brazil. More information about Experian Hitwise is available at http://www.hitwise.com.

About Experian

Experian is the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to clients in more than 65 countries. The company helps businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. Experian also helps individuals to check their credit report and credit score and protect against identity theft. For more information, visit http://www.experianplc.com/

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