comScore Inc. is one of those companies that are counting and re-counting everything that happens on the Web. It knows everything because it tracks everything: all the Internet data that comScore tracks from its computers offer the company a great deal of insight into people’s online behavior.

But the Internet marketing company has realized that its techniques are falling out of use and has decided to change them. Till now the search market share statistics made by comScore were realized by counting the entries from the boxes at the web sites run by Google Inc, Yahoo Inc. and other such search engines. But, this technique was not capable of capturing the searches that were coming from other web sites.

So, comScore has now decided to also focus on capturing these searches that are made through other web sites.

With search becoming a more ubiquitous activity across the Web, comScore is expanding the market view of the search universe to encompass other searches that occur on the Internet.  comScore's qSearch 2.0 interface will provide clients with an in-depth view of the search universe in the U.S. and worldwide that encompasses:

- Core Search Engines -- the five major U.S. search engines (i.e. Google Sites, Yahoo! Sites, Microsoft Sites, Ask Network and Time Warner Network).

- Top 50 properties worldwide where search activity is observed, which includes sites such as MySpace, Baidu, and Naver.

- Major "vertical" search locations -- such as eBay and Amazon in retail and Expedia in travel.

- Partner Search -- searches initiated at partner sites that redirect the visitor to a search engine site.

- Cross-Channel Search -- counts multiple searches when employing more than one search tab (e.g. Web, images, news) for a single search term.

- Local Search -- maps, directions, and local directory listings.

- Worldwide Search -- includes comprehensive reporting of worldwide search, with individual country reporting for the U.S., Canada, Mexico, U.K., France, Germany, Japan, China, and Korea.  Additional countries will follow.

“Search is no longer the box we’re all used to.”  has said Magid Abraham, comScore’s Chief Executive during a private demonstration on his laptop and he is right. The traditional search box is no longer the only source that should be taken into account in the present context.

comScore will continue to publicly report a market share ranking for search engines known as "core search." These market share data will use a definition comparable to comScore's previous public search share reporting. As before, share will be determined using the five major search engines (Google Sites, Yahoo! Sites, Microsoft Sites, Ask Network and Time Warner Network) but will now include the partner searches and cross-channel searches in the total for each property. To keep this metric consistent with past reporting, searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines will not be included in the "core search" numbers.

In July, Google Sites ranked as the top core search engine with 55.2 percent share of searches among the top five engines. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 23.5 percent, followed by Microsoft Sites (12.3 percent), Ask Network (4.7 percent) and Time Warner Network (4.4 percent).

Also comScore intends to develop a measurement system to reflect multitasking, meaning someone listening to Internet radio in the background, while checking e-mail. In comScore’s opinion such measurement is needed because typically only the active tasks get counted.

The changing nature of the Internet is posing new challenges to the companies which are monitoring the websites’ traffic.

Last month, Nielsen/NetRatings decided to abandon page views for measuring the total time spent on the web sites.

The Net measurement company hasn’t said that page views are irrelevant, but that this is a less accurate method for finding out the web site’s real traffic and its surfers’ engagement. According to Nielsen/NetRatings’ latest figures, people are spending most of their time with their email, instant messages, member communities, online games and global news. As a result, Nielsen/NetRatings introduced “Total Minutes”, a system that counters the total time spent by a user on a website

“Total Minutes’ is the best engagement metric in this initial stage of Web 2.0 development, not only because it ensures fair measurement of Web sites using RIA and streaming media, but also of Web environments that have never been well-served by the page view, such as online gaming and Internet applications,” said Scott Ross, director, product marketing for the NetView service in a statement at the time.