Google continues to gain search market share

Data from comScore indicates that Google's core search saw a positive impact from Google Instant.

While search queries were up 4% overall in September from August , Google (GOOG) doubled the industry's gain as a whole, comScore said in a report yesterday.  Google's share was likely bolstered by the new Google Instant which shows results as the user types.

In September, Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing grew 2% while Yahoo (YHOO) lost 5%.  Microsoft now provides search results for Yahoo so consumers may be going directly to Bing if they know the results will be coming through Microsoft's engine anyway.

Microsoft and Facebook announced a deal yesterday to incorporate some of Facebook's social graph into Bing's search results.

Yahoo, after altering  its slideshow navigation to  individual search queries, is crying foul, saying comScore didn't accurately count queries.  ComScore said it adjusted its measurement technique to account for the change, which prevented Google from artificially improving its market share.

Google searches accounted for 65.4% of all U.S.-based searching in August 2010.  That rose to 66.1% in September 2010, according to the comScore report.

Google announces earnings later today.