A survey undertaken by web audience measurement firm, comScore Networks, has found that Google increased its share of the US Web search market by 0.4 per cent in December 2006, to a total of 47.4 per cent.The survey also found that number two search engine, Yahoo!, increased its percentage share of the search market in the United States by 0.3 per cent to 28.5 per cent.
During the same month, number three-ranked Microsoft saw its share of the search market drop by 0.5 per cent, to 10.5 per cent in total. Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, also saw its share fall 0.1 per cent to 5.4 per cent.
In 16 of the last 17 months, comScore data shows that Google has seen its share of the American search market rise - a climb that sees it inch ever closer to achieving a half-share of US search.
In December, an estimated 6.7 billion searches were conducted by US web users - a figure up by 1 per cent from the previous month. In fact, since December 2005, the number of US web search queries has grown by 30 per cent, according to comScore's survey. Internet users performed 3.2 billion searches on Google sites, while Yahoo! attracted 1.9 billion searches.
