Americans conducted 10.6 billion core searches* in April, and top-ranked Google Sites continued to gain market share, accounting for nearly 62 percent of searches conducted in the month, according to the monthly comScore qSearch analysis, MarketingCharts reports.

US Core Search Rankings

Google Sites extended its share of core searches to 61.6 percent, up from 59.8 percent the previous month. All other top search engines lost market share:

Yahoo Sites ranked second with 20.4 percent, followed by Microsoft Sites (9.1 percent), AOL LLC (4.6 percent), and Ask Network (4.3 percent).

The 10.6 billion searches conducted at the core search engines represented a 2 percent decline from March:

Google Sites accounted for more than 6.5 billion core searches, followed by Yahoo Sites with 2.2 billion, and Microsoft Sites with 961 million.

US Expanded Search Rankings

In comScore's April 2008 analysis of the Top 50 properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites led with 8.5 billion searches:

Yahoo Sites ranked second with 2.3 billion searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (1 billion), and AOL LLC (839 million).

* Based on the five major search engines, including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.