November Search Queries Up a Healthy 22% YoY

comScore reported that U.S. industry search queries accelerated to 22% YoY in November compared to 19% YoY in October, in a sign that online search remains healthy in the U.S.

Google continued to outshine the group and continued to take share with growth of 32% YoY in November. According to the numbers, Google’s search share increased to 64%, while Yahoo and MSN’s share stayed flat at 21% and 8%, respectively.

Yahoo’s query growth was up 8% sequentially and up 11% YoY, compared 8% YoY in October, so this is a modest positive for Yahoo.

MSN’s query volume declined 6% sequentially and was up 2% YoY, down from 3% in October, a negative that shows Microsoft continues to face difficulties in attracting volume (in prior write-ups, we viewed this as Microsoft’s chief concern).

Ask.com feared worse with query volume declining 7% sequentially and was flat YoY. Its share of searches fell 20bps to 3.8%.

While searches is just the first order in Google’s revenue monetization scheme and click-thrus and CPC pricing will ultimately determine how Google monetizes, this provides confidence that activity remains robust on the site. If the reverse occurred, then that would be a huge negative for the stock. One has to imagine that Ballmer and now Dr. Lu is looking at these numbers and are scratching their heads.