New York, New York - (The Hosting News) - February 9, 2006 - Internet market research company, Nielsen//NetRatings, has reported that the total number of searches in the U.S. has grown 55 percent.

The study was conducted across approximately 60 search engines, and revealed that searches grew 55 percent year-over-year to nearly 5.1 billion searches in December 2005. There were 3.3 billion searches conducted via search engines in December 2004.

Even as the number of online searches swelled, the number of people connecting to the Internet rose only three percent to 207 million people in the U.S.

According to Ken Cassar, Senior Director of Analytics at Nielsen//NetRatings, ''The double-digit increase in online search activity marks a significant milestone in the evolution of Internet consumer behavior. Online search is the primary tool most people rely on to do everyday research.''

Google rose nearly six percentage points to garner a 49 percent share of all searches in December 2005 from a year prior. Yahoo! Search and MSN Search experienced slight declines in their search share points.

The top three search engines all experienced double-digit growth year-over-year in December 2005. Google Search grew 75 percent to nearly 2.5 billion searches; Yahoo! Search rose 53 percent to nearly 1.1 billion searches, and MSN Search increased 20 percent to 553 million searches.

To learn more, please visit: www.nielsen-netratings.com.

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