Search share results for December 2006 are in and Google just keeps on expanding its share of the search engine universe. Google had a whopping 47.7% share of all searches on the Internet, meaning that out of 6.7 billion searches performed in the month of December, 3.2 billion were conducted on Google.

That 47% share represented a 0.4% increase over November 2006.

Yahoo! managed to slightly increase its share of searches from November to December, finishing in second with 1.9 billion searches, roughly 28% of all searches.

Microsoft held onto third place, but continued a trend in losing ground to Google and Yahoo!, falling 0.5% with 713 million searches and a 10.6% share of the search engine market.

So what does this mean for the hundreds of other search engines competing against Google?

Most will have to continue to try to find a niche for their serivces, offering services that Google doesn't or specifically targeting a market segment and its needs.

Microsoft may be in the most untenable position. It wants to be a dominant player in search, but is losing ground rather than gaining. There was an overall 30% rise in searches compared to December 2005, and Microsoft didn't get a lift out of that increase. Instead, it slipped further behind Google and Yahoo.

Naturally, Microsoft isn't backing off. They appear to be pinning their hopes for gains in market share to a new analytics platform currently called "Gatineau."  But Gatineau won't start beta testing until later this year, which probably means a launch date is a year away.

That's another year of potential further gains for Google.

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