DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Google Inc.'s (GOOG) dominant position in the U.S. search-engine market edged up last month, while No. 2 Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) also posted a slight gain, according to sector researcher ComScore Inc. Google's search market share was 65.9% in December, a 0.5-percentage-point increase from the prior month. Microsoft's sites, including its Bing search engine, gained 0.1 percentage point to 15.1%, while Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) sites slipped 0.6 percentage point to 14.5%. IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s (IACI) Ask.com and AOL Inc.'s (AOL) market shares held steady at 2.9% and 1.6%, respectively. Americans conducted 18.24 billion core search queries in December, up from 17.89 billion in November. Google again ranked first, with 12.02 billion searches, followed by Microsoft with 2.75 billion searches and Yahoo with 2.65 billion searches. ComScore has shifted how it reports its data after Yahoo's "contextual searches" skewed earlier results. The group measures U.S. explicit core searches, which exclude contextual searches that don't reflect any intent by users. -By Nathalie Tadena, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-3287; nathalie.tadena@dowjones.com
