Hitwise today announced that Google accounted for 59 percent of the volume of searches in the U.S. for May 2006, followed by Yahoo! and MSN, with 22 and 12 percent respectively.

Not only does Google continues to lead the three major search engines, but also increased their share from month to month. Google owned 58.3 percent from total volume of searches in March 2006 and 58.6 percent in April 2006.

Yahoo! and MSN search volumes have decreased slightly. In March 2006, Yahoo! accounted for 22.3 percent while in the next month only 22.2 percent. MSN numbers for March and April 2006 is 13.1 and 12.6 percent respectively.

Bill Tancer, general manager of Global Research at Hitwise: “As the volume of searches stabilizes across the top three search engines, the battle to supplement search with additional services and win the loyalty of Internet users becomes critical.”

Source: Home Business Wire.