Google's share of search traffic rose nearly 6 percent in December from the prior year, giving the company 49 percent share of all U.S. Web searches, according to the latest statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings.

Yahoo and MSN experienced slight declines in their percentage of search share over the last year, although all three search engines had double-digit growth year-over-year.
- Google grew 75 percent to nearly 2.5 billion searches;
- Yahoo rose 53 percent to nearly 1.1 billion searches and
- MSN rose 20 percent to 553 million searches.

Online searches overall grew 55 percent year-over-year to nearly 5.1 billion searches in December. Meanwhile, the number of people connecting to the Internet in the U.S. rose only 3 percent to 207 million people over the past calendar year, Nielsen/NetRatings said.