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Their queries may not yield more than a couple of cents difference in price, but even that adds up enough to compel people to search for gas price comparisons.

The rise of gas prices in the US to $4 per gallon has people throttling back on driving, and looking for alternatives to putting the pedal to the floor. When they have to drive, they want to do so at the best price they can find for gas.

Since gas stations tend to keep their prices in lockstep with each other, only varying by a few cents at most, it isn't easy finding the best price when the next trip out requires a trip to the pump. It's a situation that measurement firm comScore said is driving big traffic numbers to GasBuddy, a network of gasoline price-tracking sites.

"37 percent of the searches for 'gas prices' phrases clicked through to a GasBuddy site, driving 640,000 visits from the U.S. to the property in April 2008," comScore said in a statement. They also cited figures showing nearly a million people performing 1.73 million searches for phrases including 'gas prices' in April.

The epic rises in crude oil have people opting for public transportation where they can, which leads us to believe sites like our local Lextran should be seeing more traffic from commuters. We also find it amusing that the Saudis are so worried about driving the adoption of alternative transportation that they are publicly calling for lower crude prices.

Such activity should have an impact on the gas price searches witnessed by comScore. On Thursday, June 19th, public transportation systems across the US will observe Dump The Pump Day, with free rides all day long; that may influence searches as well.