Media metrics firm comScore has released its assessment of U.S. search engine rankings for January 2010...and the news is good for Microsoft. Google and Yahoo continue to occupy the top two slots, with Google commanding a healthy 65.4 percent of the market during January and Yahoo managing a 17.0 percent share. However, both Yahoo and Google are down 0.3 percent compared to December 2009, with Microsoft sites-most notably Bing up a commensurate 0.6 percent, to a total share of 11.3 percent.
However, comScore's figures also show the U.S. Internet search market is continuing to expand: with Google and Yahoo each processing 2 percent more queries during January 2010 than they did during December 2009. However, the jump was even more noticeable for Microsoft sites, which saw a 9 percent increase in the amount of queries they were handling.
Ask Network grabbed a 3.8 percent share for the month (up 0.1 percent) while AOL's search service dropped 0.1 percent to a 2.5 percent share.
General search engines aren't the only types of U.S.-based searches comScore examines: comScore also found the number of searches handled by Amazon dropped by 21 percent during the month-possibly due to retailing slowing down after the end-of-year holidays-and Fox Interactive (which includes MySpace) dropping 5 percent month-to-month. However, searches on Facebook were up 13 percent compared to December 2009, while Craigslist saw a 9 percent month-on-month increase in the number of searches it handled.
