According to he figures released by comScore, during June the Americans conducted 11.5 billion searches at the core search engines, representing a 7-percent increase versus May.

Google is the market leader with more than 7 billion core searches (up 6 percent from May), distantly followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.4 billion (up 9 percent) while Microsoft registered a good increased, with more than 1 billion searches (up 15 percent).  

In the comScore June 2008 analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites led with 9.6 billion searches, a 9-percent increase versus May. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 2.6 billion searches (up 8 percent from May), followed by Microsoft Sites with 1.1 billion (up 14 percent) and AOL LLC with 792 million.

In May Microsoft unveiled Live Search Cashback, a new service largely based on the technology acquired the Redmond-based company from Jellyfish. Live Search Cashback will offer rebates to whoever searches and purchases something from the companies enrolled in the new service.

Earlier this month, Microsoft presented its plans for purchasing Powerset in its attempt to become the most popular search engine in the world.

The company is sure that by acquiring Powerset it will be able to offer a significantly better search platform, with a semantic Web technology, which follows the words’ meaning and their context in order to provide the best possible search results. This initiative could indeed turn out to be a huge success, as other search engines such as Google’s and Yahoo’s work by simply matching the requested words to the ones found on the Web pages.

According to the company’s estimates, about one-third of all Web searches do not receive a proper answer, as a direct result of the problems mentioned above. Microsoft plans to develop with Powerset’s help an engine, which will understand a significantly larger percentage of the searches’ intent, the words’ meaning and also the context of the users’ demands. The end result should lead to a far better Web site search experience for users and of course, massive financial gains for Microsoft.

In May, Yahoo improved its search service with SearchScan, basically a combination between Yahoo Search and McAfee’s SiteAdvisor technology. When a users will conduct a search on Yahoo the site with security concerns, such as spyware, adware and other malicious software that can infect and damage a user's PC, will be eliminated from the results.

Also earlier this month Yahoo announced a new service, called BOSS, a short for Build your Own Search Service. As Yahoo explained the goal of BOSS is simple: to foster innovation in the search industry. Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo Search index.