score

Microsoft and Google each grabbed a tiny sliver more of the U.S. search market last month, according to ComScore.

Both companies gained three-tenths of a point of market share in March, compared with February.

Overall, Google sites accounted for 65.7 percent of the 16.9 billion searches in the U.S. last month, ComScore said yesterday. Microsoft sites snagged 13.9 percent, while Yahoo sites held 15.7 percent. As always, ComScore's figures specifically track "explicit core" searches, which are search terms that people manually enter on a Web page.

Beyond the core search numbers, … Read more

More people viewed video ads at Hulu than at any other Web site last month, according to stats released yesterday by ComScore.

Out of the 4.3 billion video ads that U.S. Internet users watched in March, 1.2 billion of those were at Hulu, making it the top site for video ad impressions for the month. Video network Tremor Media was next on the list with 804.3 million ad views, followed by video marketplace Adap.tv with 553 million video ad impressions, and BrightRoll Video Network with 398 million.

Internet users spent a total of 1.9 … Read more

A new report from analyst ComScore says that the Verizon iPhone was the "most acquired" handset during the month of February.

ComScore's sampling, which consisted of more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers, notes that the surge of handset buyers responding to the phone's launch earlier this year helped give Apple the strongest gain of market share in the OEM category. That gain amounts to an additional 0.9 percent between November 2010 and the end of February 2011.

Nonetheless, Apple remains below competitors at 7.5 percent overall in terms of OEM market share. … Read more

The number of people accessing their bank or brokerage accounts through mobile devices surged 54 percent in the fourth quarter last year compared with the same period in 2009, according to a new report from ComScore.

During the fourth quarter of 2010, 29.8 million Americans tapped into their bank, credit, or brokerage accounts via cell phones and other mobile devices, according to the Mobile Financial Advisor report released yesterday.

Drilling down further, 18.6 million people accessed their financial accounts via a mobile browser, 10.8 million used a mobile app, and 8.1 million used text messaging, said … Read more

In February, Microsoft's Bing continued its slow but steady rise, grabbing a slightly higher chunk of the U.S. search engine market, according to data released Friday by ComScore.

Among the three top search engines, Microsoft's share of the search market rose to 13.6 percent, up half a percentage point compared with January. In comparison, Google lost two-tenths of a percentage point but still dominated the market with 65.4 percent of all searches in February, while Yahoo's share stayed flat at 16.1 percent.

Though Microsoft may have picked up more share, the number of … Read more

Yahoo reigns supreme in the U.S.

The company attracted 178.9 million unique U.S. Web visitors last month, according to research firm ComScore, barely besting Google's 178.5 million unique users. Microsoft's sites came in third place, attracting 176.8 million unique users. Facebook and AOL rounded out the top five with 153 million and 111 million unique visitors in January, respectively. All told, nearly 212 million people in the U.S. were online last month, according to ComScore.

Although Yahoo led the way in overall traffic, the company couldn't best Google in ads. According … Read more

When it comes to online video, it's hard to find someone who hasn't watched at least one clip in the past month.

A whopping 83.5 percent of all U.S. Internet users watched a Web video in January, totaling over 171 million individuals, market researcher ComScore revealed yesterday in its online video rankings. The average online video lasted about five minutes, and those who watched ad-supported content were forced to sit through an average of 24 seconds worth of commercials.

As one might expect, Google easily led the way in total viewership last month, serving video to … Read more

Though Google is still king of the U.S. search engine market, the company saw its share drop slightly in January, while Bing continued to pick up more steam, according to ComScore.

For the first month of 2011, the market researcher said Friday, Google's share of all searches dropped by 1 percentage point to 65.6 percent. At the same time, Bing's share crept up by 1.1 point to reach 13.1 percent. That left Yahoo pretty much flat with a 16.1 percent cut of all searches for January.

Those numbers follow a pattern that's … Read more

Android has swiped second place from Apple as it climbs the ranks of the top smartphone platforms in the U.S., ComScore reported yesterday.

In the fourth quarter, the Android operating system accounted for 28.7 percent of U.S. smartphone market share, edging out Apple's OS, which captured 25 percent of the market. That represents a reversal from the third quarter when ComScore tracked Android with a 21.4 percent share and Apple with 24.3 percent.

The rankings show BlackBerry maker Research In Motion still at the top. However, its 31.6 percent slice of the market … Read more