Email is still the most common daily online activity, but the percentage of consumers who use search daily has grown considerably over the past six years, according to a report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Search has now become a ubiquitous part of the online experience, with 49 percent of consumers using a search engine to find information on a daily basis.  Based on Pew's survey, email is the only more popular online activity, with 60 percent of users checking their inboxes on a daily basis.

Search has quickly risen to second place, with the percentage of daily searchers growing 69 percent since 2002. Within that same time frame, the percentage of daily email users grew from 52 to 60 percent.

As search has surged in popularity, search marketing has become a major facet of online advertising. At the same time, email's slower growth is likely one of the reasons some now question the effectiveness of permission-based email marketing.

Pew also found that large numbers of consumers visit other informational websites daily, with 39 percent surfing a news website and 30 percent checking the weather online daily. And while MySpace and Facebook both claim millions of members, surprisingly only 13 percent of internet users log on to social networks everyday.