Searchers turn to Google for holiday finds

As the holiday shopping season ramped up in November, more users continued to turn to Google to find holiday deals and gift ideas. The latest research from comScore finds that Google accounted for 58% of November searches.

by Kristina Knight

More than 10 billion searches were performed by American searchers during the month on November, about 5% less than October search numbers. Still, the month was a strong one.

Google accounted for 5.9 billion searches for the month of November, nearly the same number as October. Yahoo (2.2 billion searches) was the second most popular search engine in November, with 22% of all searches, followed by Microsoft sites with nearly 10% of searches for the month. Ask.com (4.7% of searches) and Time Warner Network sites (4.2% of searches) rounded out the top five most popular search engines.

Both Amazon.com and Ebay.com saw an bump in search queries, most likely because of the onset of holiday shopping. Ebay actually ranked fifth on the list for number of searches (489 million); they were not included in the "Top Five" list above because they are not a search engine. Amazon.com ranked ninth with 178 million searches for the month.

Also appearing on the search list was Craigslist.org, a hub not normally seen in the search category. However the primarily job-based site also offers classified listings, which may have brought more consumers to the site and encouraged them to search for gift items.