ONLINE SEARCHES GROW 55 PERCENT YEAR-OVER-YEAR TO NEARLY 5.1 BILLION SEARCHES IN DECEMBER 2005,

Nielsen//NetRatings: Google Sees Five-Point Gain in Search Share Rankings. The total number of searches in the U.S. conducted across approximately 60 search engines grew 55 percent year-over-year to nearly 5.1 billion searches in December 2005 (see Table 1). There were 3.3 billion searches conducted via search engines in December 2004. While the number of searches conducted online swelled, the number of people connecting to the Internet rose a mere three percent to 207 million people in the U.S. The double-digit increase in online search activity marks a significant milestone in the evolution of Internet consumer behavior,. Online search is the primary tool most people rely on to do everyday research. Table 1. Growth in Total Searches, Dec 2004 vs. 2005 (U.S.) Dec-04 Searches (000) Dec-05 Searches (000) Percent Change 3,279,770 5,069,377 55% Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, February 2006 Google rose nearly six percentage points to garner a 49 percent share of all searches in December 2005 from a year prior (see Table 2). Yahoo! Search and MSN Search experienced slight declines in their search share points. Table 2. Top 3 Percentage Point Changes in Search Share Rankings (U.S.) Search Engine Dec-04 Search Share Dec-05 Search Share Change in Percentage Points Google Search 43.1% 48.8% 5.7 Yahoo! Search 21.7% 21.4% -0.3 MSN Search 14.0% 10.9% -3.1 Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, February 2006 The top three search engines all experienced double-digit growth year-over-year in December 2005. Google Search grew 75 percent to nearly 2.5 billion searches; Yahoo! Search rose 53 percent to nearly 1.1 billion searches, and MSN Search increased 20 percent to 553 million searches (see Table 3). Table 3. Top 3 Search Engines’ Growth in Searches (U.S.) Search Engine Dec-04 Searches (000) Dec-05 Search (000) Growth (%) Google Search 1,414,778 2,475,895 75% Yahoo! Search 711,857 1,085,918 53% MSN Search 460,377 553,476 20% Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, February 2006 Publ 20060209