ComScore Study Reveals Online Searches Hit 17 Billion in November

November 2012 saw U.S. online searches rise to almost 17 billion, according to a new study from comScore.

Amongst the findings, Google sites had the biggest search marketshare for the month of November, followed by Microsoft who came in at second place. Meanwhile Yahoo rounded out the top three in online marketshare statistics.

Google sites equated to 67 percent of the market last month. Microsoft searches carried over 16 percent of the online search field, while Yahoo had a little over 12 percent of November searches.

The November online search market was almost consistent with the previous comparable month of October. Google saw a 0.1 percent increase in total market share, while Microsoft saw its share of online searches jump 0.2 percent.

Yahoo was the only search market contender in the top three to record a slight reduction in marketshare. According to comScore, the search giant lost 0.1 percent of the search market.

In total, November saw a decline in overall searches. From October to November total searches dropped by about 4 percent. Google and Yahoo scored a 4 percent drop in total online searches for the month. While Microsoft saw only a 3 percent fall in overall search queries.

Amongst the top five used search engines were the Ask Network and AOL. The comScore study found that the Ask Network held exactly 3 percent of the market. AOL held 1.7 percent of the online search landscape.

It was also an unsettling month for the Ask Network as its percentage of total searches dropped 10 percent in November.

The comScore statistics come from its qSearch service. According to comScore, the service captures data from 200 search properties in over 38 countries.