Google and Yahoo continue to dominate the online search market as Microsoft share went down by half percent from 11% to 10.5%.

According to comScore Networks, an Internet metrics company, Google sites captured 47.4% of U.S. search queries last December, a 0.4% increase from November while Yahoo,who opened its upgraded Panama search marketing platform to new advertisers, got 28.5% of U.S. search queries in December, a 0.3% rise from November.

Microsoft, on the other hand, did not perform as well as Google and Yahoo despite the release of Microsoft Vista.

In another statistics furnished by Hitwise, another Internet metrics firm, Google share accounted for 63.15% of U.S. searches in December. Yahoo had 21.62%; MSN/Live.com got 9.46%; and Ask had 3.72% of the U.S. search market.

Based on InformationWeek.com December figures, Google search engine referrals was the highest. Google.com referrals was 63.7% while other Google properties from Canada, India, and the United Kingdom got an additional 9.4%. Yahoo referrals accounted for 15.5%; MSN gave 1.9% visitors; and Live.com was about 0.7%.


Ma. Roma C. Agsalud