Number of searches on Google rises

The number of web searches carried out via Google rose by nearly 21 per cent in September this year compared to the same period in 2007, new figures show.

According to statistics from Nielsen Online, more than 4.8 billion searches were conducted through the Google search engine last month alone, which represents 59.7 per cent of all searches carried out during this period.

The figure for Google was followed by the 1.5 billion searches that were conducted on Yahoo ’s search engine.

Coming in at third place was Microsoft’s Live Search service with more than 953.5 million queries, followed by AOL, Ask.com, My Web, Comcast and AT&T Worldnet.

Overall, nearly 8.1 billion online searches were carried out on various search engines by US web users during the month of September - a 9.4 per cent increase from the same month in 2007.

Google has a market share of almost 60 per cent, while Yahoo has an 18.1 per cent share, followed by the 11.8 per cent portion claimed by Microsoft.