Google continued its reign over the U.S. search market in August with 65.4 percent market share, followed by Yahoo with 17.4 percent (up 0.3 percentage points) and Microsoft with 11.1 percent (up 0.1 percentage points), according to the latest analysis from comScore.

 Ask saw no change month-over-month capturing 3.8 percent of the search market, followed by AOL, which also remained flat with 2.3 percent of the market.

Samsung was the top handset manufacturer in the U.S. in July with 23.1 percent market share, while RIM led the smartphone platforms with 39.9 percent market share, according to the latest report from comScore.

For the 3-month average period ending in July, 234 million Americans used mobile devices. Device maker LG ranked second with 21.2 percent share, followed by Motorola (19.8% share), RIM (9% share) and Nokia (7.8% share.)

The Symbian platform has 54.4 percent of the smartphone market in Western Europe, according to a new report from comScore.

Even with Symbian’s continued growth in the number of smartphone subscribers, its market share has decreased as growth in the Apple OS and Android platform has risen in the past year.

Apple trails Symbian with 19.2 percent of the Western European smartphone market, followed by Microsoft (11.6%), RIM (8%) and Google with 6.1 percent.

Although it’s perhaps not a worldwide phenomenon like Facebook, new statistics from comScore indicate that LinkedIn is at least an international success.  It turns out the network is more popular in the Netherlands and Ireland than in the U.S., and it has quite a lot of fans in other countries, as well.

One thing we should note: these popularity rankings were adjusted to account for the number of local Internet users.  So no one’s suggesting that there are more LinkedIn users in Denmark than in the entire United Kingdom.

comScore announced today that it has acquired Nedstat, an online analytics and optimization firm based out of Amsterdam.

The acquisition enables comScore to substantially expand its presence in Europe, with offices in the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Sweden. The company says this will help it reach out to new clients in these markets.

comScore released its monthly Media Metrix top 50 revealing the top 50 U.S. web properties. Here are the top ten:

More than half of Malaysians online visited a news/information site in July, reaching more than 5.5 million visitors, according to a new report from comScore.

Yahoo News led as the most visited site in the category reaching 1.2 million visitors, followed by the New York Times Digital with 873,000 visitors.

Like most studies, surveys, and stat counts related to Internet user behavior, search market stats should generally be taken with a grain of salt. While they can give us a general idea of which search engines users flock to, there are too many variables to paint a completely accurate picture.

What’s your search engine of choice? Why? Let us know.

For a long time, Orkut has been the one bright spot in Google’s social media stable; it’s been the sole product that became really popular in some markets, even as everything else struggled to gain users (and/or not get the axe).  Only new stats indicate that Facebook’s beaten Orkut in India, which represented one of its two strongholds.

comScore released its Video Metrix data for July today. According to this, 178 million people in the U.S. watched online video content during the month, watching an average of 14.7 hours per user.

During the month, Facebook moved up from the fourth position to the third position behind Yahoo properties, and of course Google properties at number 1. Facebook accounted for 46.6 million viewers.

comScore has released some interesting research on Twitter usage in different countries. The firm found that in June, about 93 million people visited Twitter.com, up 109% from the previous year.

Of course this doesn’t even take into account all of the third-party Twitter apps, which many users access Twitter regularly from. A lot of users rarely go to Twitter.com.

Online retail spending in the U.S. reached $32.9 billion in the second quarter, up 9 percent over a year ago, according to a new report from comScore.

The growth rate represented the third consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth following a year of flat or negative growth rates.

"The second quarter’s continuation of the first quarter’s strong retail e-commerce growth rates is encouraging," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

Social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women then men globally, with 75.8 percent of all women online visiting a social networking site in May compared to 69.7 percent of men, according to a new report from comScore.

It’s a rare person who would suggest that any online traffic report is completely accurate; most folks know stats from Hitwise, Nielsen, and the like are closer to educated guesses.  But it turns out that last month, comScore got Yahoo’s June stats wrong by a significant margin, leading Yahoo to announce the problem in a press release today.

More than 177 million U.S. Internet users watched video content in June, according to the latest report from comScore.

Google sites, driven by video viewing on YouTube, ranked as the top video content property with 144.5 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo sites (44.9 million viewers) and Vevo (43.7 million viewers).

As everybody knows by now, the whole Google-China scuffle has not done the search giant’s market share any favors in that country.  But it’s been quite a while since we’ve checked in on Google’s performance in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole, and today, comScore was good enough to provide some relevant data.

Google fans will be pleased to know that the company’s still doing well, especially in terms of unique visitors.  comScore determined that Google reached about 55 percent of the region’s online population in May, which is impressive.

June did not go at all well for Yahoo, judging by new statistics from comScore.  In fact, at least in terms of time spent on the company’s properties, June was terrible, with Yahoo managing to set a couple of records of the wrong sort.

Palm’s out of the running.  Microsoft’s about to lose its advantage.  And although they’re still way out in front, even RIM and Apple appear to be in trouble, according to the latest report from comScore, which indicates that Android has taken market share from all of its top competitors.

comScore has revealed some findings on display ads in the U.S. Flash and rich media ads account for 40% of impressions, according to the firm’s report. JPEG ads led the market with over 42% of impressions in the U.S., while "leaderboard"-style banner ads (728 x 90) were the most commonly viewed display ad by size.

comScore has released some numbers about smartphone and feature phone browser and app usage, as it relates to map access and mobile navigation in the U.S. These numbers are based on a study, which found  14% of mobile users in the U.S. accessed maps on their devices in April, as the mobile map audience reached 33.5 million users, a 44% increase from last year.

More mobile users are also now accessing maps via apps as opposed to the browser, the study found.

During the month of May 183 million U.S. Internet users watched online video, according to the latest figures from comScore.

YouTube saw record levels of viewing activity during the month with an all-time high of 14.6 billion videos viewed and surpassing 100 videos per viewer for the first time.

U.S. Internet users watched nearly 34 billion videos in May, with Google sites leading the way with 14.6 billion videos, representing 43.1 percent of all videos viewed online. YouTube account for the majority of videos viewed at the property.