Google topped global search charts in August, but search engines in China and South Korea are challenging the search company in their own countries, according to Internet research firm comScore.
This was the first time comScore evaluated online search activities on a worldwide basis, the company said in a statement.
According to comScore, more than 750 million people 15 years old or older, or about 95 percent of the Internet audience around the world, performed 61 billion searches in August. That's an average of 80 searches per users, comScore said.
Those 750 million people used Google for 37.1 billion searches. Of those, 31 billion searches were performed on Google, and 5 billion were at Google's video-sharing site YouTube.com, according to comScore.
Yahoo ranked second with 8.5 billion searches, while Beijing-based language search engine Baidu.com was third with more than 3.2 billion searches, comScore said. Microsoft's Web sites ranked fourth with 2.1 billion searches, and Korea's Naver.com, owned by NHN, ranked fifth with 2 billion searches worldwide, according to comScore.
According to the study, in the Asia-Pacific region, which includes Australia, China, Japan and India, 258 million users performed 20.3 billion searches, while in Europe, 210 million users performed 18 billion searches, and in North America, 206 million users performed 16 billion searches. In the Middle East and Africa, which ranked at the bottom of the pack, 30 million people conducted 2 billion searches, comScore said.
"Seeing Asian search engines like China's Baidu.com and Korea's NHN ranked alongside Google and Yahoo underscores the fact that search has become a truly global phenomenon," said Bob Ivins, comScore vice president of international markets.