The Indian search market is dominated by global Internet brands — Google being inarguably India’s leading search engine with an overwhelming 81% market share, accounting for more than 1 billion searches conducted in June.

According to a study of the India online search market by comScore, Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 9.4%, followed by Ask Network (1.9%) and Microsoft Sites (1.7%).

As the top local player in the search market, Indian Internet portal Rediff.com ranked fifth with 1.5% of all searches, indicating that there is substantial room for growth among local Internet brands.

Despite being one of the most rapidly emerging Internet markets in the world in terms of overall usage growth, India currently exhibits less frequent search behavior than its global counterparts. Of the 37 countries individually reported by comScore, India ranked second to last with 53 searches per searcher during the month, well below the worldwide average of 93. India also had significantly fewer search visits per searcher (14.7 vs. 23.6) and searches per search visit (3.6 vs. 3.9).