Audience Reach

The chart below shows the most popular search sites in the United States, as based on audience reach for January 2003. Audience reach is the percentage of US home and work internet users estimated to have searched on each site at least once during the month through a web browser or some other "online" means. For January 2003, there were an estimated 134 million active at home and at work internet users in the US.

Only "search specific" traffic is counted toward the figures below. This means that only visits deemed to be search-related were counted in the totals. That helps prevent non-search traffic at portals (such as visits to get email) from polluting the data.

A panel of more than 60,000 home and work surfers was measured to estimate these figures. Because a web surfer may visit more than one service, the combined totals exceed 100 percent.

US Digital Media Universe Audience Reach
Home & Work Users, January 2003

KEY: GG=Google, YH=Yahoo, MSN=MSN, AOL=AOL, AJ=Ask Jeeves,
OVR=Overture (GoTo), IS=InfoSpace, NS=Netscape, AV=AltaVista,
LY=Lycos, ELINK=EarthLink.com, LS=LookSmart, 
For links, see the Major Search Engines and Major Metacrawlers pages.

Be aware that some services listed may have greater reach than the chart reflects. For instance, links from Overture appear on search results pages at Yahoo, MSN and Lycos, to name only a few of Overture's partners. However, the chart only shows people who actually visited Overture itself or who visited a site "powered" by Overture, where the overture.com domain shows in the browser address window, after a search is performed. Go.com is an example of this.

The same is true for some other services. For example, those viewing Google results at Yahoo or Netscape are not counted in Google's traffic. Similarly, those viewing LookSmart results at MSN Search do not count into LookSmart's traffic.

Wondering where some familiar names are, such as AllTheWeb or the Open Directory? These are services that didn't get enough traffic to make it into the top list. They receive less audience share than the last service shown on the chart. As for Teoma, its traffic is included in that for parent company Ask Jeeves.

Figures for InfoSpace reflect search traffic from the four major meta search sites that it either owns or operates: Dogpile, Excite, WebCrawler and MetaCrawler, according to InfoSpace.

Not shown on the chart above are searches conducted through Xupiter.com (2.6 precent audience share), 1stblaze.com (2.5 percent) or Goclick.com (1.3 percent). These services were included in data for the top 15 search destinations sent from NetRatings for January 2003, sites that have the highest unique audience. However, they are not what Search Engine Watch considers to be mainstream or traditional search engines.

Here's audience reach over the past few months, for the sites listed above with an audience reach of 5 percent or higher:

KEY: As above

Here's audience reach over the past few months, for the sites listed above with an audience reach of below 5 percent:

KEY: As above

Time Spent On Site

The audience reach charts above reflect unique visits to the various search engines, not the overall volume of search activity. For example, a person might visit Yahoo only once in a given month and would be counted toward Yahoo's share. The same person might also visit Google every day in the same month and conduct several searches per day at Google. Despite this, the person would still count only once in the Google figure above, which shows the percent of "unique visitors" in a given month that came to the site.

Because of this, the average time spent by visitors in a given month can be a useful way to determine which sites may be more popular, when it comes to search. The next chart shows the average number of minutes spent per visitor at each site, in January 2003, on search-specific activity. Services with more than 2 minute of search activity in the month are listed, with the exception of Xupiter.com (which averaged 5.7 minutes):

Average Minutes Spent Searching Per Visitor
Home & Work Users, January 2003

KEY: As above

New Measuring System & AOL

The old measuring system used by NetRatings prior to October 2002 monitored only visits to web sites made through standard browsers such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. However, people may access web sites via other means, such as through a browser built into a cellular phone, via an instant messaging application or through specialized software. Under the new NetRatings system, the entire "digital media universe" is supposed to be included, not just browser activity.

In terms of search, the new system made little difference except with AOL. AOL's audience reach stayed about the same, but the time those visitors spent searching dramatically increased.

Throughout most of 2002, AOL typically had between 10 to 11 minutes of search activity per visitor. In the new system that started for October 2002, the average minutes more than tripled. I'm following up with NetRatings to better understand why this may have happened.

The next chart estimates the total time spent searching by the digital media audience at each site listed above. It multiplies the number of visitors to each site by the average number of minutes each visitor is estimated to have spent at the site. The result shows the total number of hours spent by searchers at each site, for January 2002:

Total Search Hours
In Millions of Hours, January 2003

KEY: As above

For more about the concept of search hours, see the Google Tops In "Search Hours" Ratings article.

For another guide to overall search activity, review the Searches Per Day page. However, this page is not complete, because not all search engines reveal the amount of searches that they process. The figures are also self-reported. You may also find the StatMarket Search Engine Ratings page helpful. This has links to past press releases ranking search engines by the volume of traffic the drive to web sites.

More Resources

Nielsen//NetRatings
Please note that the "Top 25" web property figures provided at this site are not the same ratings as shown on this page. This page is produced from a custom "search-specific" report sent to Search Engine Watch by Nielsen//NetRatings.

Nielsen//NetRatings: Hot Off The Net
Further reports from Nielsen//NetRatings for the United States and also for other countries.

Past NetRatings Search Engine Ratings
Shows popularity fluctuations in NetRatings data for major search engines stretching back to June 1998. Only available to Search Engine Watch members. Click here to learn more about becoming a member.

Who Powers Whom? Search Providers Chart
A page within Search Engine Watch summarizing how the major search engines get their results from major search providers.

comScore Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings
A page within this site summarizing comScore Media Metrix ratings of the major search engines.

NetRatings Leaps Beyond The Browser
AdAge, Sept. 30, 2002

Explains more about the new measuring system that NetRatings is using.

Google Tops In "Search Hours" Ratings
The Search Engine Report, May 13, 2002

Explains the significant difference between rating services as "popular" based on audience reach versus usage time.