• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, October 4, 2005

The number of searches conducted by online users in the United States surpassed 5 billion in August--an increase of 4.8 percent from July's 4.8 billion, according to new data from comScore qSearch.

comScore also reported that more people used search engines in August than the previous month--132.4 million U.S. Internet users did a search in August, up from 131 million in July.

Those increases came on top of what Nielsen//NetRatings previously pegged as a 3 percent uptick in July. (Nielsen//NetRatings reported the slightly lower figure of 4.454 billion total searches in July, up from 4.327 billion in June.)

While the research companies' estimates vary slightly, both firms hold that use of search continued to increase during the summer months--a time when consumers were expected to spend less time indoors and at their computers.

Google captured the largest share of searches in August--37.3 percent, up slightly from last year's 36.1 percent--according to comScore. Yahoo! saw a slight drop, to 29.7 percent from 30.6 percent. MSN accounted for 15.8 percent--up from 14.4 percent last year, while Time Warner Network dipped to 9.6 percent, from 10.6 percent. Ask Jeeves came in with 6 percent, up from 5.9 percent.