Nielsen/NetRatings on Monday released data on the top U.S. search providers for July, ranked by total number of searches. Google continued to lead with nearly half of all queries, followed by Yahoo and MSN.

Google led in July U.S. searches with an estimated 2.78 billion, up 35 percent from a year ago and a 49.2 percent share, according to Nielsen (pdf). Yahoo was second with 1.35 billion searches, up 34 percent from a year earlier and accounting for 23.8 percent of July searches; MSN was third with 0.54 billion, down 3 percent with a 9.6 percent search share; and AOL was fourth with 0.36 billion searches, down 7.8 percent from a year earlier and a 6.3 percent share of July searches.

comScore a few days ago reported search shares that vary somewhat from Nielsen figures.