DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Google Inc.'s (GOOG) dominant market share for Internet searches in the U.S. inched up in May, according to comScore Inc., which also reported the share was unchanged for Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO). Monthly figures from the industry researcher show that Google's search market share was 65.5%, up 0.1 percentage point from April. Yahoo's share remained at 15.9% while Microsoft's sites, including its Bing search engine, came in at 14.1%. Market share for the fourth-largest search engine--IAC/InteractiveCorp.'s (IACI) Ask.com--fell 0.1 percentage point to 2.9%. AOL Inc.'s (AOL) share was flat at 1.5%. Overall, users made 17 billion shares in May. Google's sites ranked first with 11.2 billion searches, followed by Yahoo's 2.7 billion and Microsoft's 2.4 billion. ComScore has shifted how it reports its data after Yahoo's "contextual searches" skewed results last summer. The group measures U.S. explicit core searches, which exclude contextual searches that don't reflect any intent by users. -By John Kell, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2480; john.kell@dowjones.com
