Gasbuddy, the largest web property to publish locations of the cheapest local gas prices, recorded a record high of 2.5 million unique visitors in May 2008, reported comScore (via MarketingCharts).

Both the number of people visiting gas price resource sites and the number of people conducting internet searches on the term "gas prices" shows a strong correlation with the price of gasoline in the US, it said.

The top-performing search terms in generating traffic to GasBuddy in April 2008 were phrases that included the words "gas prices," according to comScore Marketer, a new search marketing intelligence tool.

In total, nearly 1 million people conducted 1.73 million searches for phrases including "gas prices" during the month, or an increase of 175 percent versus year ago.

When average gas prices increased 10 percent from October to November — the largest monthly increase by percentage in the last year — many consumers used search engines to find deals on gasoline.

GasBuddy was the primary beneficiary of these searches, with 37 percent of the all searches for "gas prices" resulting in a click-thru to a GasBuddy site, driving 640,000 visits to the property during the month.

Image credit: Rochester Turning.