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Cross -posted from SearchSense:

There was an interesting debate on SearchSense last week between our CEO and Duncan Oakenden of Desginate about when the online advertising market will "top out". When it comes to use of search engines by people the rate of growth is continuing unabated.

I enjoyed this post to Media Guardian’s Organ Grinder blog the other day detailing some of the statistics:

Our infatuation with internet search engines shows no sign of slowing down just yet. According to the good people of Nielsen//NetRatings, some 706m searches were undertaken in the UK in August this year, up 30 million on six months before.

Over half a billion – 546m – results were clicked on (click-throughs, in the parlance), 18% up on six months ago.

Google is as dominant as ever, with 68% of the click through market in August, up 2.8% since February 2006. Its nearest competitor, Yahoo!, is trailing way behind with just 9.1% of the market, with Ask.com in third place with 7.8%.

And our obsession with the biggest search engine of all, Google? Well that’s climbing ever higher too, if you take a look at the number of people useing the search engine to find out more about it: Google trends map for "Google"