Google retained its global search crown in August, but some smaller competitors in China and South Korea are giving the company a run for its money in Asia. So says comScore in its first-ever study of worldwide search activity.

On the basis of data gathered for its qSearch 2.0 service, comScore reported on the top 50 worldwide Internet properties that use some form of search. The conclusion: More than 750 million people age 15 and older -- or 95 percent of the worldwide Internet audience -- conducted 61 billion searches worldwide in August, an average of more than 80 searches per searcher.

"With the tremendous volume of search activity occurring around the world, search continues to present an abundance of marketing opportunities to companies on both a global and local scale," Bob Ivins, executive vice president of International Markets at comScore, said in a statement.

Google Power vs. China Power

Google sites saw 37.1 billion searches in August. Of that total number, Google saw 31 billion searches and YouTube.com saw five billion. By comparison, Yahoo sites garnered 8.5 billion searches.

Baidu.com, a Chinese language search engine, followed in third place with more than 3.2 billion searches. Microsoft sites ranked in fourth place worldwide, while Korea's NHN Corporation, which owns Naver.com, ranked fifth with two billion global searches.

"Seeing Asian search engines like China's Baidu.com and Korea's NHN ranked alongside Google and Yahoo underscores the fact that search has become a truly global phenomenon," Ivins said. The continued development of search in international markets will undoubtedly present compelling opportunities for savvy marketers on a global scale."

Searching for Revenue

The Asia-Pacific region, which includes large markets such as China, Japan, and India, outperformed the rest of the world with 258 million unique searchers conducting 20.3 billion searches in August. Europe reported the second-most searchers (210 million) and searches (18 billion), followed by North America, with 206 million searchers and 16 billion searches.

Meanwhile, the Latin American region demonstrated the heaviest search activity per person, with more than 95 searches per searcher in August. The search market in the Middle East and Africa region is the most underdeveloped thus far, with the fewest searchers (30 million), searches (2 billion), and searches per searcher (70).

"The search distribution across the world and the fact that Asia is a bigger market than Europe and North America is interesting," said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. "It suggests that there is enormous revenue growth potential in those markets versus the United States, where most of the revenue is currently concentrated."

Changing Ad Buying Behavior

For anybody that is skeptical about the power of search marketing, Sterling said this study demonstrates the global phenomenon. It's not a passing fad, Sterling argued. In fact, he said he expects brand advertisers to shift more of their ad budgets online in the coming years.

Specifically, Sterling's research indicates U.S. marketers are spending 10 percent or less of their total ad budgets on the Internet, despite the fact that the time consumers spend on the Internet is now equal to the time they spend with television. In other words, online ad spending is lagging behind consumer adoption.

"When people see this behavior exposed so transparently by this data, they get a crystal clear image of where they should be spending money," Sterling said. "Search in particular is the starting point for so many consumers that it will eventually gain more share of these ad budgets."