Google regains ground in search wars

The big G back on the up.

Google has bounced back after a recent dip in its share of the US search market, new figures show.

Statistics released by web monitoring firm ComScore reveal that the search giant increased its share of the US search market in August by 0.4 percentage points to 44.1 percent.

The search giant's 11-month run of consecutive gains ended in July, with a one percent fall on the previous month.

Yahoo maintained second place with 28.7 percent of US searches, while MSN and AOL Time-Warner each slipped 0.3 points from the previous month, to 12.5 and 5.6 percent respectively. Ask came fifth with 5.5 percent, a modest market share gain compared with July.

ComScore reported that Americans conducted 6.5 billion searches in August, up three per cent compared to July. Compared to the previous year, the volume of search queries increased by 28 percent.

Google led the pack serving 2.9 billion search queries, followed by Yahoo at 1.9 billion, MSN with 812 million, Time-Warner with 360 million and Ask with 358 million.

Google and Yahoo continued their dominance in toolbar searches, accounting for more than 95 percent of the market. Google grabbed 49.6 percent of toolbar searches, while Yahoo captured 47.3 percent.