Metamend presidents Todd Hooge, Glen Convey and I had a coffee meeting yesterday at which we discussed the comScore figures presented in yesterday’s blog post. Looking at the figues which show Google with a 61% hold on worldwide search queries, each of us saw slightly different things.

Todd saw the biggest figure. In August 2007, over 61billion searches were conducted across all search engines in the comCast study. 61billion searches served! That is a staggering figure that points out how important organic SEO is to companies who want their content to be visible on the Internet.

Glenn saw the discrepancy between Google and the nine other brand names on the list. With over 60% of the search market served, Google serves more users than all other search engines combined. He also noted how the Chinese language search engine Baidu and the South Korean portal NHN had broken into the Top10 at positions 3 and 5 respectively.

I saw a few other items in the numbers some of which are inspiring and others somewhat disappointing. I also noted the rise of Baidu and NHN but suggested that their inclusion on the list is due to a new method of measuring comScore announced. The inclusion of these engines does show how important the Asian Pacific market is becoming with almost a third of the 257,952,000 unique search users measured.

One thing that stunned me is the measurement of the five companies at the bottom of the list, eBay, AOL, Ask, Fox and Lycos. Both eBay and AOL served more searchers than Ask did. Fox and Lycos were not far behind. With extraordinary technology, excellent mapping and local search and a still strong brand name, Ask can’t seem to catch a break. Seeing Lycos appear on the Top10 radar screen was also a surprise.

The August 2007 comScore search market share numbers continue to promote interesting thoughts about the global search market. Google is rising in popularity, Yahoo is falling slightly and nation specific engines Baidu and NHN are gaining strength.

For SEOs, this obviously renews focus on Google as the primary driver of search traffic however it also points out the obvious fact that we need to think of Asia as a B2B and B2C market. As Todd noted, the numbers also reaffirm the importance of organic SEO internationally.

Now that comScore is measuring search related properties beyond the traditional Big4, our view of the search market is likely going to change rapidly. September’s market-share numbers should be even more interesting as students return to school in the northern hemisphere.