via Search Engine Land

After compiling and comparing several research firms' reports on search engine popularity, Search Engine Land reports that Google's continues to increase and Microsoft Live's has at least stopped falling. The results come after metric services Nielsen/NetRatings, comScore, Hitwise and Compete issued their reports on search share for February.

Google is far and away the winner, accounting for anywhere from 47 percent to 64 percent of searches, depending on which research company's figures one considers. All agree, though, that Google's popularity is going nowhere but up.

Yahoo apparently remains steady: NetRatings and Hitwise have its usage dropping since December, but comScore and Compete show it ended February right about where it was a year ago.

The bleeding seems to have, at the very least, stopped for Microsoft's Live.com, with the number of searches leveling off or even gaining toward the end of last year and early this year.

Ask.com remains fairly level, with just modest changes up or down reported from each of the four firms. AOL's search engine, too, is fairly level in its usage numbers. The results from Ask.com and AOL hint at their having loyal users, but not much more.