According to comScore, Americans conducted 11.5 billion searches in June through the Big 5 search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Ask) representing a 7-percent increase versus May.

Searches on the Engines Themselves: Google has continued to increase its dominanace month over month, with more than 7 billion core searches (up 6 percent from May), distantly followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.4 billion (up 9 percent) and Microsoft with more than 1 billion searches (up 15 percent).  

Searches in the Search Networks (sites that incorporate search capabilities from 1 or more of the Big 5): In the top properties where search activity happens, Google Sites led with 9.6 billion searches, a 9-percent increase from May. Yahoo! Sites came in second with 2.6 billion searches (up 8 percent from May), followed by Microsoft Sites with 1.1 billion (up 14 percent) and AOL with 792 million.

One reason Microsoft may have seen such a jump in the gross number of searches may be a results of its Live Search Cashback program, unveiled in May.  This is a new program where Live Search Cashback will offer rebates to whoever searches and purchases something from companies enrolled in the new service.

Coming from Cybergold (now MyPoints), where we used to pay consumers for their attention,  I can see how incentives could help Microsoft improve its positon. But only to a point. Google’s brand loyalty is pretty strong.

Feel free to download one of the comScore stat charts in Excel here.