US online searches increase in July

US online searches were up 5% month in month in July 2009, according to the latest figures from The Nielsen Company.

The figures, compiled using a new methodology, also show that Google’s share of the total search market fell from 66.1% to 64.8%.

Online Americans conducted a total of 10.5 billion searches in July 2009, up from 10 billion in June, said Nielsen.

Despite its overall market share going down, the number of Google searches grew 3%, from 6.6 billion searches to 6.8 billion.

Yahoo Search was up 11% to 1.8 billion searches in July, and grabbed a 17.1% share of market.

Microsoft’s search sites increased to a 9% share of the market in July, up from 8.8% in June, with a total of 947 million searches.

comScore data for May 2009 revealed that Americans conducted 14.3 billion searches at the five core search engines.

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of searches were performed on Google, 20% on Yahoo and 8.2% on Microsoft Sites, comScore said.

Earlier in the year, SearchIgnite published a report which found that US ad spending among its clients was down 4% in the first three months of the year when compared to the same period a year earlier.