High Gas Prices Drive U.S. Consumers to Find Deals on the Internet, According to comScore

The Gasbuddy Organization, Inc. Recorded a Record High of 2.5 Million U.S. Unique Visitors in May 2008 According to comScore Media Metrix

RESTON, VA, June 20, 2008 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today announced that the Gasbuddy Organization, the largest web property that publishes the location of the cheapest gas prices available within local areas, recorded a record high of 2.5 million unique visitors in May 2008. Both the number of people visiting gas price resource sites and the number of people conducting Internet searches on the term “gas prices” shows a strong correlation with the price of gasoline in the U.S.

Average U.S. gas prices have steadily increased in recent months, reaching a record high of $4.09 per gallon in the week of June 9, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This has been mirrored by substantial gains in Web traffic to the GasBuddy Organization (as shown in the chart available at http://www.comscore.com/blog/gasbuddy.png).

Not surprisingly, the top-performing search terms in generating traffic to GasBuddy in April 2008 were phrases that included the words “gas prices,” according to comScore Marketer, a new search marketing intelligence tool. In total, nearly 1 million people conducted 1.73 million searches for phrases including “gas prices” during the month, representing an increase of 175 percent versus year ago.

When average gas prices increased 10 percent from October to November – the largest monthly increase by percentage in the last year – many consumers used search engines to find deals on gasoline. GasBuddy was the primary beneficiary of these searches, with 37 percent of the all searches for “gas prices” resulting in a click-thru to a GasBuddy site, driving 640,000 visits to the property during the month.

The analysis of the correlation between average U.S. gas prices and the number of searches on “gas prices” can be found on the comScore Voices blog at: http://www.comscore.com/blog/gas_prices_searches.png.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/boilerplate.