Google accounted for 71.08% of all US searches conducted in the four weeks ending Oct. 3, 2009, according to research just released by Experian Hitwise. Yahoo Search, Bing, and Ask.com received 16.38%, 8.96%, and 2.56%, respectively. The remaining 52 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.04% of US searches:

Longer Searches Increase

Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, increased 2% between August and September 2009. Searches of eight or more words increased 6%. The same time period showed that shorter search queries, those averaging one to four words long, were flat from month to month. Searches of one word made up the majority of searches, amounting to 24.32% of all queries:

Google Channels Most Traffic

Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. In September 2009 compared with September 2008, automotive, business and finance, entertainment, news and media, online video and sports categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines:

About the data: Experian Hitwise analyzed how 10 million Internet users in the US interacted with more than 1 million websites during the time periods cited.