Nielsen Online released its January 2009 U.S. search engine rankings Wednesday and not surprisingly, Google has a commanding lead.

The research firm said 9.4 billion queries were submitted to search engines during the month, representing a 28.5 percent year-over-year growth.

Incredibly, Google was the only search engine to outgrow the market over the past year. The search giant captured 62.8 percent share in January and enjoyed 40.8 percent growth.

Yahoo, the second-largest search engine in the U.S., grew just 8.7 percent year-over-year and captured 16.2 percent of the U.S. search market in January. Microsoft’s Live Search fared slightly better with 18.3 percent year-over-year growth, but managed just 11.2 percent share. The big three were trailed by AOL Search and Ask.com, which captured 4.0 percent and 1.9 percent of the U.S. search market, respectively.

Source: cnet