Top Five Search Engine Rankings

Google Search continued its lead with 45 percent of all searches, followed by Yahoo! Search at 23 percent, and MSN Search at 12 percent. AOL Search garnered nearly eight percent of searches, and Ask Jeeves Search saw two percent.

Top 5 Search Engines Ranked by Search Share: September 2005

1. Google Search | 45.1% |
2. Yahoo! Search | 23.3% |
3. MSN Search | 11.7% |
4. AOL Search | 7.8% |
5. Ask Jeeves Search | 2.5% |

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, October 2005

Parent company Google has seen a solid 30 percent year-over-year growth from 62.9 million unique visitors in September 2004 to 81.6 million unique visitors in September of this year.

This growth was driven by a sharp rise in unique audience among Google's most popular offerings; Google Gmail grew 249 percent from 1.7 million unique visitors in September 2004 to nearly six million in 2005, while Blogger grew 138 percent from a unique audience of 6.2 million last September to 14.7 million in September 2005. Google Maps skyrocketed 752 percent from 1.7 million unique visitors in February to 14.4 million in September of 2005.

Other Google strongholds included Google Local, which drew 10.8 million unique visitors in September, and Google Earth, which attracted 6.6 million unique visitors in September.