comScore Search Engine Rankings: Google Up, Double Digit Growth for MSN Live (Search Engine Watch Blog)

Rich search engines got richer in January in the monthly search engine rankings. Among the Top 50 properties worldwide some surprises surfaced this month as comScore reported total searches grew at a 7.9 percent clip.

Sites owned and operated by Google enjoyed 7.7 billion searches. No shock, maybe awe.

Yahoo sites again came in a distant second (2.5 billion searches) -- again growing at less than half Google's overall 8 percent rate.

Google.com grew even faster - 9.4 percent. YouTube's modest 2.6 percent growth rate slowed the core search engine down.

Microsoft sites at 1.1 billion searches means a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would only total 3.6 billion searches.