• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 25, 2005

Industry watchers expected that search growth would moderate in the summer, on the theory that consumers spend less time at their computers during the warm weather. But new figures from Nielsen//NetRatings show that U.S. Internet users actually performed more searches last month than in June.

The total number of Web searches in the United States rose last month to 4.454 billion--up nearly 3 percent from 4.327 billion in June, according to data from Nielsen//NetRatings. The data also revealed that individual searchers conducted an average of 37.6 searches last month, up 3.7 percent from 36.2 searches in June.

Still, the growth rate was less impressive than earlier in the year; in the second quarter, users conducted 12.8 billion searches--5 percent more than in the first quarter.

Google once again captured the largest proportion of searches, accounting for 46.2 percent last month--down slightly from 47 percent in June. Yahoo! Search was responsible for 22.5 percent of July searches--up slightly from 22.3 percent in June--while MSN Search accounted for 12.6 percent of searches last month, up marginally from 12.5 percent in June.

Figures released last week by research company Hitwise vary slightly from those of Nielsen//NetRatings, but both research companies show Google leading the market, followed by Yahoo!, with MSN coming in third. Hitwise had reported that Google and Google Image Search were responsible for 43.29 percent of searches for the four weeks ending July 23, while Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Image Search accounted for 19.68 percent of searches for the same time period. MSN Search accounted for 15.32 percent of searches for the four weeks ending July 23, according to Hitwise.