NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Google's reign over the search market continued in September, when half of all Internet searches relied on the company's technology, according to Internet tracker Nielsen//NetRatings.

The number of searches Google (Charts) conducted during the month rose 24 percent, to 2.8 billion, from the same month a year ago.

Yahoo (Charts) came in second with 1.3 billion searches, a 12 percent increase from September 2005. Microsoft's (Charts) MSN/Windows Live held the No. 3 spot, with 519 million searches, even as its volume of searches fell 12 percent from the prior year.

Yahoo holds 23.4 percent of the search market. MSN has a 9.2 percent share.

Rounding out the top five search providers were Time Warner's (Charts) AOL and IAC/InterActive's (Charts) Ask.com.

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