In Brief: Semel Smiles, Google Surges, And More

Yahoo managed to please its CEO while holding serve in comScore's search engine rankings for February 2006, but Microsoft, Ask, and Time Warner/AOL gave up some ground. Among brands people sought through search in 2006, MySpace topped a Hitwise list of searched brand terms

Reuters cited Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, who

Google clocked in at 48.1 percent of the US search market by Hitwise analysis. They found MySpace was the most searched brand name based on the search activity of some 10 million Internet users in the US.

Following MySpace were eBay and Yahoo in second and third; MapQuest and Craigslist rounded out the top five. "Search term data is a great way to measure brand equity, brand association with product, and unaided brand recall as it reflects what consumers are truly interested in,” said Tessa Court, chief marketing officer for Hitwise.

Wal-Mart, Google, Target, Match.com, and Bank of America finished out the top ten brands in the Hitwise review.