Nielsen//Netratings announced the October 2006 search engine market share numbers yesterday.  The numbers, which show which search engines internet surfers are using, are released each month for the previous month's usage.

Not surprisingly, Google claimed the top spot with 49.6%, down slightly from September's 50%.  Yahoo took the number two position with 23.9%, an increase of 0.5% from last month.  Windows Live usage dropped slightly to 8.8% but it retained its third place ranking, while AOL (with 6.2%) and Ask.com (with 2.8%) rounded out the top five spots.

Yahoo proved to be October's clear growth leader with a 30% increase in traffic over this time last year.  Although its growth declined in September, Ask.com bounced back last month with a 25% increase in usage over last year.  And even though Google's overall usage dropped slightly in October, its year to year growth continued to rise 23%.

Check out the Internet Marketing Monitor's Search Engine Summary for a side-by-side monthly comparison of usage percentages or download the report in PDF format.