Search engine use is spiking, study reveals by Michael Bazeley Mercury News November 21, 2005 http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/13222972.htm People are going onto the Internet to use search engines so often that it's closing in on e-mail as the top online activity, a new study has found. E-mailing is still the top Internet activity among online adults, with 74 million of them -- or 52 percent -- saying they use e-mail on a typical day, according to a report released today by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and comScore Media Metrix. But daily search engine use is growing faster, jumping 55 percent to 59 million people from June 2004 to September of this year. On an average day, 41 percent of online Americans use a search engine. That sharp increase contrasts with what had been relatively slow but steady growth in search engine use since 2002. Several factors explain the quick rise in search activity, including the spread of high-speed Internet connections, also known as broadband, into more homes, said Pew Director Lee Raine. The ubiquity of broadband -- 70 percent of Internet users have access to it at work or home -- is prompting people to shift from using phone books and other offline information sources to the Web. "People are beginning to see the computer as this information- connected device," Raine said, "and they're turning to it more often." Pew's results come from a survey of 2,251 adults taken between Sept. 14 and Oct. 13. The increased popularity of search engines has provided a huge boost to local search companies Google and Yahoo, and a bevy of smaller search engines. Google's revenue jumped 96 percent to $1.58 billion from September 2004 to this September. Yahoo's sales jumped 47 percent from a year ago in September to $1.33 billion. Searches where people are looking for some type of local information continued to rise, the report said. In August, Internet users conducted 448 million local searches. Google Web sites captured about 44 percent of those, while Yahoo sites took in about 28 percent. However, Yahoo had the top yellow pages site, followed by Verizon and Google. Internet companies are furiously trying to build sites that can meet the demand for local information and tap into what many see as a potentially lucrative local advertising market. "I think there's more technology being deployed dedicated to helping people make local searches," said James Lamberti, vice president at comScore.