"More and more people are going to search engines to find what they're looking for," said Bill Tancer, Hitwise's vice president of research. The best-known sites, he said, grew in popularity thanks to their brand equity with consumers. "Google's become ubiquitous with the entire Internet population," said Tancer.
The data, compiled by Hitwise from its online panel of 10 million U.S.-based Web users, also showed that time spent at the various search sites varied widely. Visitors to Google spend an average of 12 minutes and 31 seconds at the site, while visitors to Yahoo! Search remain for an average of 11 minutes, 24 seconds. But visitors at MSN Search spend, on average, only 7 minutes and 9 seconds at the site. Length of visit also varied among the newer search sites. For instance, users spent 10 minutes and 31 seconds on average at Vivisimo.com, but only about 4 minutes and 57 seconds at Snap.com.