• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 22, 2005

Online users conducted more second-quarter searches on Google than on Yahoo!, MSN, America Online, and Ask Jeeves combined, according to data released by Nielsen//NetRatings on Thursday. Overall, the space continued to grow in the second quarter, with users conducting around 12.8 billion searches--up 5 percent from the first quarter, according to the report.

Some 6.09 billion searches were performed on Google in the second three months of the year--6 percent more than the approximate 5.73 billion searches performed in the first quarter.

At Yahoo!, the number of searches increased by 9 percent to around 2.8 billion, while MSN saw its searches drop by 4 percent to around 1.59 billion from 1.66 billion. Second-quarter searches also increased at AOL (15 percent, to around 647 million) and Ask Jeeves (16 percent, to around 251 million).

For the month of June, Google captured 47 percent of all searches, compared to Yahoo!'s 22 percent, MSN's 12 percent, and AOL's 5 percent. Also last month, for the first time, My Way Search--a meta-search engine owned by Ask Jeeves--cracked the top five most popular search engines, accounting for 2 percent of all searches. My Way allows users to search using either Google, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, or LookSmart, and carries sponsored listings above the organic results.