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Baidu.com — the leading search engine in China — was the third-largest global search property with 3.4 billion searches in December 2007, capturing 5.2 percent of worldwide search share and beating Microsoft Sites for third place, according to comScore, reports MarketingCharts.

Some 66.2 billion search queries were conducted worldwide in December, and Google Sites accounted for 62.4 percent, followed by Yahoo Sites (12.8 percent) and Baidu.

In China, Baidu.com led the search engine market in 4Q07 with a 60.1 percent share, and Google came second with a 25.9 percent share, followed by Yahoo China with 9.6 percent, according to Analysys International, Reuters reports.

Though Baidu's share was flat compared with the third quarter, Google's increased 2.2 percentage points (up from 23.7 percent in Q3). The US search giant recently launched a mobile SMS search service in China. See 3Q07 search share in China:

Together, Baidu, Google and Yahoo China account for nearly 96 percent of the Chinese search share; the search market totaled $131.3 million in revenue in the fourth quarter - nearly double that of 4Q06, according to Analysys International.