Culture

Google gains ground in search

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer

Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.

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Elinor Mills

Feb. 10, 2006 4:16 p.m. PT

Google's share of search traffic rose nearly 6 percent in December from the prior year, giving the company 49 percent share of all U.S. Web searches, according to the latest statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings.

Yahoo and MSN experienced slight declines in their percentage of search share over the last year, although all three search engines had double-digit growth year-over-year. Google grew 75 percent to nearly 2.5 billion searches; Yahoo rose 53 percent to nearly 1.1 billion searches and MSN rose 20 percent to 553 million searches.

Online searches overall grew 55 percent year-over-year to nearly 5.1 billion searches in December. Meanwhile, the number of people connecting to the Internet in the U.S. rose only 3 percent to 207 million people over the past calendar year, Nielsen/NetRatings said.