Hitwise reports that Google remains the dominant consumer search engine, claiming 59.2 percent of searches across major engines in July - a 14 percent increase from July 2004. However, visits to Yahoo Local were 4.4 times the number to Google Local in July, although the latter is growing at a faster rate.

The top three search engines - Google, Yahoo Search and MSN Search - accounted for 93.5 percent of U.S. internet searches across major engines in July, according to new data from Hitwise, with Yahoo and MSN accounting for 28.8 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively.

Unlike its competitors, Google does not have a portal to drive traffic to its search service, whereas Yahoo received 73 percent of its search visits from its main portals, and MSN received 61 percent from its.

In local search, Yahoo is still sovereign. local.yahoo.com had more than quadruple the number of visits to local.google.com in July, but Google Local's market share increased 61 percent between February and July 2005, whereas Yahoo Local's grew 14 percent.

Google Local's growth likely correlates with that of Google Maps (maps.google.com), which has quickly grown to become the third-ranked map site, according to Hitwise, which reports that in July some 17 percent of Yahoo Local's visitors, for example, went directly onto Yahoo Maps.