Computerworld - While Google easily hung on to its first-place spot in the U.S. search engine market last month, Yahoo made a surprising, if slight, advance.
Google, long the heavily dominant player in the search market, captured 65.8% of the market in July, according to comScore, a market research company. However, the search engine giant slipped a little last month, dipping 0.4% from 66.2% in June.
Where did that 0.4% share go? Google can look to Yahoo for that.
The second-place search engine grabbed Google's lost share and took its U.S. search share from 16.7% in June to 17.1% in July.
Microsoft Bing has been steadily in third place since it was released a little more than a year ago, and it retains that spot with an 11% share -- the same amount it had in June.
Bing had better luck between May and June.
A June report from comScore noted that Bing showed more growth than rival Google, compared with the previous month. Bing, which had its first anniversary in late May, saw its search share in the U.S. market inch up from 12.1% in May to 12.7% in June.
In that same May-to-June period, Google lost a little ground, with its search share dipping from 63.7% in May to 62.6% in June.
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at 
@sgaudin or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed 
. Her e-mail address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.
Read more about Applications in Computerworld's Applications Topic Center.
Free Insider GuideCopyright © 1994 - 2012 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Computerworld Inc. is prohibited. Computerworld and Computerworld.com and the respective logos are trademarks of International Data Group Inc.
