Google Approaches 70 Percent of U.S. Searches in June 2008

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Google Approaches 70 Percent of U.S. Searches in June 2008

Search leader up 8 percent year-over-year;
Google accounted for 87 percent plus of searches in UK and Australia market

NEW YORK, NY – July 15, 2008 – Google accounted for 69.17 percent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending June 28, 2008, Hitwise announced today. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 19.62, 5.46 and 4.17 percent respectively. The remaining 42 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.70 percent of U.S. searches.

Percentage of U.S. Searches Among Leading Search Engine Providers
Domain	June-08	May-08	June-07
www.google.com	69.17%	68.29%	63.92%
search.yahoo.com	19.62%	19.95%	21.31%
search.msn.com	5.46%*	5.89%*	9.85%*
www.ask.com	4.17%	4.23%	3.42%
Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending 6/28/08, 5/31/ 2008, 6/30/2007 from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. * - includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.
Source: Hitwise

In the U.K. market, Google search properties (Google.co.uk and Google.com) accounted for 87 percent of all UK searches in June 2008 representing a 10 percent increase compared to June 2007. Yahoo! search properties accounted for 4.00 percent of UK searches in June 2008, a 2 percent increase compared to April 2008. MSN search properties accounted for 3.72 percent and Ask search properties accounted for 3.07 percent of searches. MSN increased two percent compared to April 2008 and Ask increased 6 percent. In the Australia market, Google search accounted for 88 percent of all AU searches in June 2008 representing a 12 percent increase compared to June 2007. MSN search accounted for 7 percent and Yahoo! search accounted for 4.00 percent of AU searches in June 2008.

Percentage of U.K. Searches Among Leading Search Engine Providers				Percentage of Australian Searches Among Leading Search Engine Providers
Domain	June-08	May-08	June-07	Search Engine	June-08	May-08	June-07
Google Properties	87.34%	87.30%	79.48%	Google Search*	87.81%	88.91%	78.55%
Yahoo! Properties	4.00%	4.09%	7.67%	MSN Search†	6.72%	5.52%	14.68%
Microsoft Properties	3.72%	3.72%	5.74%	Yahoo! Search‡	3.93%	4.03%	5.28%
Ask Properties	3.14%	3.07%	4.59%	Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending 28/06/2008, 31/05/2008 and 30/06/2007) from the Hitwise sample of 3 million Australian Internet users. *Includes executed searches on www.google.com and www.google.com.au †Includes executed searches on www.live.com, search.ninemsn.com.au and search.msn.com ‡Includes executed searches on au.search.yahoo.com and search.yahoo.com
Note: Data is based on UK Internet usage over the four week rolling periods (ending 5/31/ 2007, 4/26/08, 5/26/2007) from the Hitwise sample of 8.4 million UK Internet users. Note that the percentages for the search properties include the .uk and .com domains.
Source: Hitwise UK				Source: Hitwise Australia

Google an Increasing Source of Traffic to Key U.S. Industries

Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing June 2008 to June 2007, the Travel, News and Media, Entertainment, Business and Finance, Sports, Online Video and Social Networking categories showed double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

U.S. Category Upstream Traffic from Search Engines and Google – June 2008
Category	Percent of Category Traffic from Search Engines, June-08	Percent Change in Share of Traffic From Search Engines, June-08 – June-07	Percent of Category Traffic from Google, June-08	Percent Change in Share of Traffic From Google, June-08 – June-07
Health and Medical	45.52%	3%	31.08%	6%
Travel	34.38%	9%	24.41%	19%
Shopping and Classifieds	25.31%	1%	17.10%	9%
News and Media	21.20%	5%	14.52%	12%
Entertainment	24.07%	16%	15.87%	23%
Business and Finance	18.44%	12%	12.18%	23%
Sports	13.48%	14%	9.21%	21%
Online Video*	29.84%	39%	20.96%	56%
Social Networking*	16.63%	18%	10.35%	23%
All figures are based on U.S. data from the Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users. * denotes custom category
Source: Hitwise

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,500 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise’s patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.