According to a market analysis conducted by Hitwise, an Internet monitor that provides search intelligence for online advertising, Microsoft’s (News - Alert) MSN search engine is the biggest loser over the past year and a half in a market ruled by Google.

 

Google (News - Alert) continued to capture the U.S. Internet search market, Hitwise said. Google accounted for 71 percent of all online search engine queries in the United States for the four weeks ending July 26, hitting the 10th consecutive record high in monthly search share, according to the company.

 

Google had contributed for 64 percent of Internet search in July of last year, and 63 percent in January 2007, said the Internet search intelligence agency.

 

Microsoft’s MSN search engine was the worst hit by the dominance of Google. The search engine witnessed the most precipitous fall over the past 19 months, said Hitwise.

 

In July, MSN accounted for just 5.36 percent of the U.S Internet search market, down from 8.79 percent in July 2007 and 10.35 percent in January 2007, according to the Hitwise report.

 

Hitwise said that MSN showed a steady decline from February, and that Yahoo’s performance was relatively better. According to data from Hitwise, Yahoo’s share of U.S. Internet queries in July is 18.65, down from 22.13 percent in July last year. In January 2007, Yahoo had contributed for 21.40 percent share of U.S. Internet search.

 

According to Hitwise, MSN’s poor performance may be one reason for Microsoft’s interest in Yahoo. Microsoft made the bid attempt early this year, when the search engine’s performance became a concern for the company. Microsoft had announced $44.6 billion bid to acquire Yahoo, but later withdrew its offer.

 

Google and Yahoo recently entered in a non-exclusive agreement that lets Yahoo use Google’s ‘AdSense for Search’ and ‘AdSense for Content’ advertising programs, according to the companies. The deal will give Yahoo the option of displaying Google ads alongside its own search results.

 

Apart from the three key players, Ask.com was the only other search engine Hitwise included in its study. Ask.com accounted for 3.53 percent of U.S. Internet searches in July, a slight increase from 3.21 percent last year. The remaining 47 search engines known to Hitwise together accounted for 1.69 percent of U.S. searches, the researcher said.