WebProNews

August figures for search engine share as recorded by Compete found Google with two-thirds of queries made during the month.

"And you may ask yourself - well...how did I get here?" -- the wisdom of David Byrne, "Once In A Lifetime"

Judging by the latest figures from Compete, Google got there by snaring search market share away from Microsoft's MSN and Live Search services.

Two-thirds of the searches performed in August traveled through Google. 66.6 percent. That's not the mark of the beast, but the mark of a titan.

Yahoo held onto second place with a smidgen of a gain, to 19.8 percent. Microsoft had enjoyed a double-digit share in July, but that evaporated to 9.4 percent in August. Ask.com fared as it did in July, with 3.1 percent.

"After two strong months of gains MSN/Live search market share lost nearly a point in August," said Compete's Jeremy Crane.

"The silver lining for Live Search is that despite market share losses, the actual number of queries being performed on Live increased nearly 3% from July to August."

Query volumes increased for the month for Yahoo and Ask, slight though they were. Google query volume rose over 3.5 percent from July to August.