Google, Microsoft Gain Search ShareGoogle, Microsoft Gain Search Share

Google held on to its long U.S. search-market lead and even extended it slightly as it recorded 65.4% of U.S. search queries in October, according to monthly U.S. search engine rankings released by ComScore Wednesday.

Google broadened its share by 0.5%, and gains were also recorded by Microsoft, whose Bing search engine likewise raised its share by 0.5%. However, Microsoft's share of the entire market is just 9.9%.

As Google and Microsoft moved ahead in the rankings, Yahoo was the loser, as it suffered a 0.8% market share drop to 18%. ComScore surveyed the five major search engines, rounded out by Ask Network and AOL.

Searches were up in October across the board. "Americans conducted 14.3 billion searches in October, up 3% from September," ComScore said. "Google sites accounted for 9.3 billion searches, followed by Yahoo," which delivered 2.6 billion searches. Microsoft was third with 1.4 billion searches, Ask had 552 million searches, and AOL had 412 million.

Microsoft's Bing, according to ComScore, recorded 1.2 billion searches, representing an 8% gain and the largest growth in expanded search queries, which measures all the top properties where search activity is observed. Google logged a 5% gain to 13.5 billion expanded search queries, while Yahoo's searches in the category dropped 1% to 2.66 billion expanded search queries.

Search engine market share results have been in more flux than usual since August when Microsoft and Yahoo entered into an agreement in which Microsoft's Bing was placed on Yahoo's Internet properties.

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