Google’s domination of the search market continues, according to July 2009 data from comScore qSearch. But Microsoft’s Bing is making small inroads.

Microsoft sites were the only major search player to increase market share between June and July 2009, climbing 0.5 percentage points. Search query share going to Google and Yahoo! was chipped away slightly, by about 0.3 percentage points each.

Google still held tight to the top spot, with the vast majority of July’s searches. Almost one-fifth of searches were performed at Yahoo! sites, and 8.9% at Microsoft sites—a share they hope to increase as part of their upcoming partnership.

Total US search queries were down 3% month over month in July. Microsoft was the only search provider to see an increase in queries, of 2%. At Google and Yahoo!, queries were down 4% and 5%, respectively.

According to ForeSee Results, one reason Google remains firmly entrenched in first place is that the search giant enjoys very high customer satisfaction. Google scored an 86 out of 100 on the University of Michigan’s latest American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), the highest for any search property. Yahoo! ranked second, with a score of 77.

“Google is unquestionably king of search, so the only competition is for second place,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results. “The research was done before Bing entered the market, so we don’t know what effect its entry will have. But Google’s customers are pretty happy and have little reason to try something new, so Bing has a real uphill battle ahead.”

That battle has high stakes: eMarketer projects nearly $12 billion will be spent on US search advertising in 2009, almost 49% of the total US online ad market.

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Check out today’s other article, “How Much Time People Really Spend on Ads.”

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