From the Telegraph…

Google was used for over half of the world’s 61 billion internet searches in the month of August, according to a report.

The US search engine powered 31 billion queries during the month, say the web analysts comScore.

Google sites recorded 37 bn searches in August

In total more than 37 billion searches were carried out across all Google sites.

Google-owned video-sharing phenomenon YouTube scored 5 billion searches in August.

Second on the list was Yahoo!, another US-based search engine, which was a long way behind Google with 8.5 billion searches recorded across the month.

Third was the Chinese search engine Baidu with 3.2 million searches, followed by all Microsoft sites, such as MSN, with 2.1 billion. Fifth was Korea’s NHN, with 2 billion.

ComScore’s Bob Ivins 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.”

The report is billed as “the first comprehensive study of worldwide search activity”.

It also revealed that the Asia-Pacific region, including China, Japan and India, contained the greatest number of unique searchers, with 258 million conducting over 20 billion searches during the month.

Second was Europe with 210 million searchers making 18 billion searches, followed by North America, with 206 million making 16 billion searches.

The most underdeveloped area in terms of web searches was the Middle East-Africa region, with 30 million recording 2 billion searches…