Same old story: Google stays on top of Internet search game

Google remained king of the search hill in November, accounting for 49.5% of all Internet searches, 3.1 billion total searches, Nielsen/NetRatings reports. The number of searches on Google rose 31% year over year.

Yahoo was second with 24.3 % of the market and 1.5 billion searches, up 27% year over year. MSN was a distant third, with 8.2% of the market, 515 million searches, down 12%, while AOL was fourth, 389 million, up 11%. Ask.com’s bid to become a search engine showed progress. Even though it ranked fifth in November with a 2.6% market share, it searches grew 33% from a year earlier to 159 million.

Rounding out the top 10 were My Way, Dogpile.com, Earthlink, BellSouth and Comcast.

Web traffic measurement company Hitwise reports that for holiday shopping, Google has an even stronger lock. Search engines’ market share for the four weeks ending Dec. 16 were: • Google, 62.79% • Yahoo, 21.90% • MSN, 9.28% • Ask.com, 4.07% • AOL, 0.59% • All other search engines, 1.19%