Search leader Google continued its record growth in market share of searches and is up 5% year-over-year in May, accounting for 68% of searches in the US and 87% of searches in the UK, according to the latest data from Hitwise.

Google accounted for 68.29% of all US searches in the four weeks ended May 31, followed by Yahoo Search, MSN Search and Ask.com with 19.95%, 5.89% and 4.23% respectively, Hitwise said.

The remaining 41 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.63% of US searches.

UK Search Market

In the UK market, Google search properties (Google.co.uk and Google.com) accounted for 87% of all UK searches in May - 12% more than in May 2007.

Yahoo search properties accounted for 4.09% of UK searches in May, a 2% increase from the previous month.

MSN search properties accounted for 3.72% and Ask search properties accounted for 3.07% of searches. MSN increased 2% from April and Ask increased 6%.

Google an Increasing Source of Traffic to Key US Industries

Search engines remain the primary way for internet users to navigate to key industry categories.

Comparing May 2008 with May 2007, the Travel, News and Media, Entertainment, Business and Finance, Sports, Online Video and Social Networking categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.