Americans conducted 13.1 billion core searches in February 2009, down 3% vs. January, primarily the result of the shorter, 28-day month, according to qSearch data from comScore that tracks the US search marketplace, MarketingCharts reports.

February 2009 US Core Search Rankings

Google Sites led the US core search market in February with 63.3% of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (20.6%), Microsoft Sites (8.2%), Ask Network (4.1%) and AOL LLC (3.9%).

Of the 13.1 billion searches at the core search engines that were conducted in February, Google Sites handled 8.3 billion core searches, followed by Yahoo Sites with 2.7 billion and Microsoft Sites with 1.1 billion.

February 2009 Top Properties

In the comScore February 2009 analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites led with 11.3 billion searches, down 4% vs. January. Yahoo Sites ranked second with 2.8 billion searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (1.1 billion) and AOL LLC (761 million).