DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Google Inc. (GOOG) slightly increased its leading market share among U.S. Internet-search engines last month, while Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Bing search engine also gained market share, according to market researcher comScore Inc. (SCOR). Google's U.S. market share rose 0.1 percentage point to 66.5% in April from the prior month. Microsoft's share also edged up 0.1 percentage point to 15.4% last month. Yahoo Inc.'s (YHOO) sites remained in the No. 3 spot, slipping 0.2 percentage points to 13.5%. IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s (IACI) Ask.com's share and AOL Inc.'s (AOL) shares were unchanged at 3% and 1.6%, respectively. Americans conducted 17.1 billion core search queries last month, down from 18.36 billion in March. Google again ranked first, with 11.4 billion searchers, followed by Microsoft, with 2.6 billion, and Yahoo with 2.3 billion. 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
