Web search starts to rival email

Google is the most popular search engine, reaching 75.3 million unique visitors in October

Internet users are quickly embracing search engines as part of their everyday online routine, according to a newly published study from the Pew Internet Project. 

Between September 2005 and June 2004 the number of internet surfers who used search engines on a daily basis increased by 55 per cent to a total of 41 per cent of the US online population.

This means that search is slowly gaining ground on email, which is still the most popular online activity.

Of the people that actually went online on any given day, 74 per cent used email and 59 per cent used a search engine.

Other popular activities include reading news (46 per cent), online job searches (29 per cent), instant messaging (18 per cent) and online banking (18 per cent).

Only three per cent of the people surveyed indicated that they read blogs or participate in online auctions.

Supporting data from web traffic monitoring firm ComScore indicated that Google is the most popular search engine, reaching 75.3 million unique visitors in October, followed by Yahoo at 68 million and MSN at 49.7 million.

ComScore also noted a strong rise in the use of local search over recent months. Google handled 43.7 per cent of all local search queries, according to the data, followed by Yahoo with 28.2 per cent and MSN with 13.7 per cent.