WASHINGTON, DC — No wonder search engines are battling for dominance on the World Wide Web. Forty nine-percent of internet surfers use a search feature daily — up from one third in 2002 — according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.“With this increase, the number of those using a search engine on a typical day is pulling ever closer to the 60-percent of internet users who use email, arguably the internet’s all-time killer app, on a typical day,” report author and Pew Senior Research Fellow Deborah Fallows wrote in the report. “Underscoring the dramatic increase over time, the percentage of internet users who search on a typical day grew 69-percent from January 2002, when the Pew Internet & American Life Project first tracked this activity, to May 2008, when the current data were collected. During the same six-year time period, the use of email on a typical day rose from 52-percent to 60-percent, for a growth rate of just 15-percent.”

In the recent past, news sites were more popular than search engines, but that has changed, according to Pew Associate Director Susannah Fox.

“Search is now taking center stage… Whereas e-mail is still primary for communications, search is now primary for information activity,” she told the ClickZ Network.

Surprisingly, search users are segmented among broadband and dial-up customers: 58-percent of broadband users search daily, while only 26-percent of dial-up users visit search engines frequently.

“Dial-up users are less sophisticated and engaged as internet users than are broadband users,” Fallows told ClickZ. “They do less search, just like they do less online overall. So it’s not that they’re searching in a different way; they’re just doing less searching.”

In addition, socioeconomic status, technological sophistication, gender and age factor into the search equation.

“Those who are using search engines on an average day are more likely to be socially upscale, with at least some college education and incomes over $50,000 per year,” Fallows noted in the report. “They are more likely to be internet users with at least six years of online experience and to have their homes wired for fast internet connections. Younger internet users are more likely than older users to search on a typical day. Men are more likely than women to search on a typical day.”

The availability of search boxes and other tools on content sites has added to the utility of search functions, and that explains at least part of the rapid shift in user behavior, Fallows noted in the report.

Among other online activities, 39-percent of users check news sites daily, 30-percent check weather, 29-percent research a hobby, 28-percent surf the Web for fun and 13-percent visit social networking sites.

The study author interviewed 2,251 adults (18 and older).