Google by the numbers

No doubt you've heard that Google plans to offer shares in the company to the public and hopes to raise a couple of billion dollars in the process.
The folks at Comscore Media Metrix, who hope to be to the Web what the Nielsen people are to TV ratings, put together a quick by-the-numbers look at Google. Here's what they've come up with (Most of this is lifted straight from Comscore's press release which doesn't seem to be up yet at Comscore's Press Center):
SEARCH VOLUME: In total, Americans conduct between 3.0 and 3.5 billion searches per month. More than one billion of these searches are typically conducted at Google. The average search engine user conducted 32 searches in February. The average Google user conducted 25 searches at the engine, more than twice the average number of searches (12) conducted by users of the top ten engines.
SHARE OF SEARCH: In February, Google controlled approximately 35 percent of searches conducted at major search engines by U.S. Internet users. Yahoo!, its closest competitor, conducted 30 percent of searches by U.S. Internet users in February. Among worldwide Internet users (Anglophone population), Google's lead is even more dramatic, with the company accounting for more than 43 percent of all searches.
PENETRATION: Approximately 50 percent of all U.S. search engine users conducted at least one search at Yahoo! in February, the highest penetration of any search engine. Google ranked second, conducting at least one search for 45 percent of all U.S. search engine users
UNIQUE VISITORS: Combined, search sites reach more than 130 million Americans or approximately 85 percent of all Internet users each month, ranking Search/Navigation among the most popular categories on the Web. Just over 65 million people visited Google sites in March 2004, an increase
of 23.5 percent versus March 2003.

Unique Visitors and Audience Reach
March 2004
Source: comScore Media Metrix
U.S. Home, Work and University Internet Users
Unique Visitors Reach %
(000)
Total Internet Users 154,051 100
Search/Navigation Category 131,030 85.1
Google Sites 65,029 42.2
Yahoo! Search 59,755 38.8
MSN Search 48,912 31.8
AOL Proprietary Search 34,629 22.5
Ask Jeeves 17,524 11.4
Lycos Network Search 9,024 5.9

PROPERTY BREAKDOWN: Below is a breakdown of traffic to Google's network of sites.

Google Sites
March 2004
Source: comScore Media Metrix
U.S. Home, Work and University Internet Users
Unique Visitors
(000)
Google Sites 65,029
GOOGLE.COM 63,057
Google Web Search 58,494
Google Images 15,924
Google Directory 5,074
Google News 3,277
Google Groups 1,954
Froogle 749
BLOGSPOT.COM 3,382