Google Sites led the US explicit core search* market in February 2011, accounting for 65.4% of total searches conducted during the month, followed by Yahoo Sites with 16.1% and Microsoft Sites with 13.6%, according to data from comScore qSearch.

Ask and AOL rounded out the top 5 with 3.2% and 1.7%, respectively.

Total Core Search Queries

More than 15.4 billion explicit core searches were conducted in February, down 9% from January.

Google Sites ranked first with 10.1 billion searches, down 9% from the previous month, followed by Yahoo Sites with 2.5 billion (down 9%) and Microsoft Sites with 2.1 billion (down 5%). Ask accounted for 491 million explicit core searches (down 15%), followed by AOL with 267 million (down 10%).

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Total Core Search

Google Sites accounted for 64.9% of total core search queries conducted in February, followed by Yahoo Sites with 17.3% and Microsoft Sites with 13.4%. Ask comprised 2.9% of total search queries, followed by AOL with 1.6%.

Americans conducted nearly 17.0 billion total core search queries in February. Google Sites led with 11.0 billion searches, followed by Yahoo Sites with 2.9 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.3 billion.

"Powered By" Reporting

Google's "powered by" share** is composed of searches conducted at Google entities, as well as branded searches at AOL and Ask. Bing's powered by share is composed of searches conducted at Microsoft entities as well as branded Yahoo entities.

In February, 68.0% of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 26.2% of searches were powered by Bing organic results.

* Explicit core search is defined by comScore as user engagement with a search service with the intent to retrieve search results.

**In order to accurately represent the continued evolution of the search landscape, comScore is providing insight into the share of algorithmic explicit searches that are powered by Google and Bing, and branded as such to the consumer.