Chitika has provided some very interesting search market-related findings. According to the firm, Firefox is responsible for a significant amount of Google’s share. In fact, based on the sample looked at, there were more Firefox-based Google searches than total searches from Bing or Yahoo.

It’s important to note that this isn’t representative of the entire search market, but it’s an interesting finding that may indeed have bigger implications in that market.

"The next big shift in the search engine wars may come in 2011, when Mozilla’s contract setting Google as the default browser in their popular Firefox browser comes to an end," says Chitika’s Daniel Ruby. "Based on a sample of over 14 million impressions across the Chitika advertising network, Firefox currently holds the keys to 9.17% of the search market – more than any one company except Google itself."

Of course Bing and Yahoo combined will account for more than Google’s Firefox share. If that means anything.

"Of the sample pulled by Chitika Research for the purposes of this study, Firefox drove 23% of all traffic to the network," says Ruby. "Of Firefox’s search traffic, 91.45% came from Google, and 39.87% specifically from the Firefox start page and embedded Google search bar."

He also speculates that we’ll see "a massive bidding war" when Mozilla’s contract with Google gets closer to the end. I guess we’ll see who wants it most. Of course meanwhile, Google will be heavily pushing Chrome, trying to get some of those Firefox users themselves into their own browser.

How much does the browser play into your search habits? Tell us about it.