Google's search share continues to creep up

Google's steadily increasing search share neared 70 per cent in June in the United States, according to new figures released yesterday by Hitwise.

Its share increased from 68.29 per cent in May to 69.17 per cent in June, the analyst firm said. Over the same period, Yahoo! dropped from 19.95 per cent to 19.62 per cent and Microsoft dropped from 5.89 per cent to 5.46 per cent.

Fourth-place Ask.com has managed to eke out gains over the last year, though it slid from 4.23 per cent to 4.17 per cent from May to June.

Google crossed the 60 per cent share threshold in July 2006, analyst Matt Tatham said, slid back the one month in August 2006, but has been north of 60 per cent ever since September 2006.

Search share is important to the companies' business because it means there's a potentially larger inventory of search results against which advertisements can be sold.

The statistics are based on a sample of 10 million US internet users, Hitwise said.

Original article: Google's U.S. search share nears 70 percent from CNET News.com