It's almost as rare as hen's teeth to hear that Yahoo! and Microsoft did better than Google at anything - but alas, January's "share of search" results are one of those occasions.

Now before anyone gets too carried away, they haven't overtaken Google in terms of search share - they just gained some ground in a month where Google dropped some.

According to comScore, Google dropped 0.5 percentage points to sit at 63% of all US searches in January 09. In the scheme of things not exactly the worst result. However given their never ending march towards 100% - it will surprise many.

On the other hand, Yahoo! and Microsoft will have surprised many also, by finally regaining some share of the market they've been losing over the last few months.

Yahoo! increased its share of the market by 0.5 percentage points, to sit at 21%, while Microsoft grew to 8.5% (up 0.2 percentage points). The trend for Microsoft was also echoed over in France where it was the top growth performer - with an improvement of 5.5% according to AT Internet Institute.

There's nothing here that's going to have a drastic impact on search as we know it, and my guess is that the trends will return to normal in Feb 09. But when you're Yahoo! and Microsoft, you have to celebrate any wins you can when it comes to search.

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