WebProNews

Nielsen Online has announced the January search share rankings for the U.S., and, well, you know the drill: Google's first, Yahoo's second, and Microsoft's third.  But there were slight twists this time in that Google didn't make much headway and Microsoft achieved some solid gains. 

A comparison of Google's December and January shares actually shows that the search giant's reach slipped by 0.1 percent.  This left Google in control of 62.8 percent of the market, instead of closer to the significant two-thirds mark.

Yahoo also lost a bit of market share during this period, with its December standing of 16.8 percent falling to 16.6 percent in January.  Yahoo's year-over-year growth of 8.7 percent in terms of search queries was less than impressive, as well.

Which brings us to Microsoft.  The Redmond-based corporation saw its share rise 1.4 percent between December and January, boosting it from 9.8 percent all the way to 11.2 percent.  This might show that Microsoft's search efforts aren't doomed to just dwindle away, and the 10 percent threshold that it crossed is important in a symbolic sense, at least.

Fourth- and fifth-place AOL and Ask, meanwhile, both lost 0.1 percent of market share.