The leading web researcher - comScore, Inc. on Monday (May 18, 2009) released its monthly comScore qSearch study of the U. S. search marketplace. According to the comScore study, in April 2009, Americans conducted 14.8 billion core searches, a 3-percent gain versus March.

The comScore study found that Google Sites led the U. S. core search market in April with 64.2 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (20.4 percent), Microsoft Sites (8.2 percent), Ask Network (3.8 percent) and AOL LLC (3.4 percent). Google Sites accounted for 9.5 billion core searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3 billion and Microsoft Sites with 1.2 billion.

In the comScore April 2009 study of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites led with 13 billion searches, up 5 percent versus March. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 3.2 billion searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (1.3 billion) and AOL LLC (795 million).