Reports: Google first for traffic, search

Despite gains in the search from other search engines, Google remains the most popular search engine. The online monster is also tops for traffic, according to a recent report from comScore.

by Kristina Knight

For search, Nielsen researchers found that Google accounted for 4.5 billion searches in February 2008, a 58% share. On average, Google users made more than 40 searches each during the month. Closest to Google was Yahoo with 1.36 billion searches (17% share). Each user made an average of 25 searches during the month. Microsoft ranked third with 860 million searches (11% share) with each user making 28 searches during the month.

Meanwhile, according to a comScore report, Google sites ranked number one for traffic during the month with 29 million unique users. Microsoft was next with 27 million uniques and Ebay ranked third with 21 million unique users.

The fastest growing online web hubs, though, tells a different story. Though users return time and again to their favorite online destinations, new sites are continuing to grab a larger portion of their time.

Mozilla was the fastest growing group of sites with a 48% increase from January 2008 to February 2008. Fish4 sites showed more than 20% growth while B-Sky-B sites showed 4% growth for the reporting period.

As far as categories go, gifts and flowers websites ranked first, likely because of the Valentine's holiday in February. Flower/Gift sites showed nearly 30% growth during the reporting period. Automotive sites ranked second for the category with 9% growth and career resource websites ranked third with 7% growth. Rounding out the top five were e-cards sites (5% growth) and classifieds websites (4% growth).