The logo of web search engine Google is seen behing a computer keyboard. Google increased its share of the US online search market in April while Yahoo! and Microsoft both lost ground, according to figures released on Monday by tracking firm comScore.

Google increased its share of the US online search market in April while Yahoo! and Microsoft both lost ground, according to figures released on Monday by tracking firm comScore.

ComScore said that 64.2 percent of the searches conducted by Americans in April were at sites, up from 63.7 percent in March.

Yahoo!'s share of the search market slipped 0.1 percentage points in April to 20.4 percent while Microsoft saw its share fall by 0.1 percentage points to 8.2 percent.

Search engine Ask held steady at 3.8 percent while AOL saw its fall by 0.3 percentage points to 3.4 percent, said.

The tracking firm said Americans conducted 14.8 billion searches in April, up three percent over March, with Google accounting for 9.5 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! with three billion and Microsoft with 1.2 billion.

(c) 2009 AFP