Summer is apparently good surfing season. U.S. online users performed more searches last month than in the previous month, with the total number of searches increasing nearly three percent - from 4.327 billion in June to 4.454 billion - according to new data from Nielsen/NetRatings, reports MediaPost. Each searcher conducted, on average, 37.6 searches last month, up 3.7 percent from 36.2 searches in June. Also, in the second quarter of the year, users conducted 12.8 billion searches - 5 percent more than in the first quarter.

Google again accounted for the majority of searches - 46.2 percent in July, down from 47.0 percent in June. Yahoo accounted for 22.5 percent of July searches - up from 22.3 percent in June. MSN Search accounted for 12.6 percent of searches in July, up from 12.5 percent in June.

Internet Retailer reports that in fourth place AOL Search accounted for 5.4 percent of searches in July, down from 5.5 percent in June. And My Way, with 2.2 percent, last month overtook Ask Jeeves, which accounted for 1.6 percent of searches.

The average number of terms that users searched on was also higher at Google than elsewhere - 27.4 compared with 20.1 for Yahoo. Netscape was third with 19.7 terms per user, on average, followed by Dogpile with 15.0 and MSN with 13.9.