The total number of searches in the U.S. conducted across approximately 60 search engines grew 55 percent year-over-year to nearly 5.1 billion searches in December 2005, according to numbers released
by Nielsen//NetRatings on Thursday. There were 3.3 billion searches conducted via search engines in December 2004. Notably, while the number of searches conducted online swelled, the number of people
connecting to the Internet rose a mere three percent to 207 million people in the United States. Google accounted for 49 percent of all searches in December, up from 43 percent the year prior. Yahoo
Search and MSN Search experienced slight declines in their search share points.
--Gavin O'Malley
