In December 2008, Americans conducted 12.7 billion core searches, up 3% from November 2008, says ComScore, Inc., the leader in evaluating the digital world, in its today released monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace.

According to U.S. Core Search Rankings, Google Sites topped the U.S. core search market during the last month (December 2008) with 63.5 percent of the searches conducted, unchanged from November, followed by Yahoo! Sites (20.5%), Microsoft Sites (8.3%), Ask Network (3.9%) and AOL LLC (3.8%).

The analysis discloses that Americans conducted 12.7 billion searches at the core search engines, up 3% from November.

Google Sites handled 8 billion core searches, accompanied by Yahoo! Sites with 2.6 billion and Microsoft Sites with 1.1 billion.

According to the comScore December 2008 analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites topped with 11.2 billion searches, up 4% versus November. Yahoo! Sites placed second with 2.7 billion searches, accompanied by Microsoft Sites with 1.1 billion and AOL LLC with 740 million.

ComScore, Inc. is a worldwide leader in assessing the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence.