Yesterday, Nielsen reported that Google performed well in December, and today, Hitwise seconded the assessment.  In fact, the two firms also agreed that both Yahoo and Bing lost market share, which has made Google’s lead all the more impressive.

Hitwise determined that Google controlled 71.57 percent of the search market in November.  Its report concerning December pegs the search giant’s market share at 72.25 percent, and if you didn’t notice, that’s starting to put it pretty close to the 75 percent-mark.

Yahoo, meanwhile, fell beneath the 15 percent-mark in December, moving from a market share of 15.39 percent to 14.83 percent on a month-over-month basis.  Which is not at all the sort of thing Carol Bartz probably hoped would happen during her first holiday season as CEO.

Finally, poor Bing didn’t do too well its first time out, either, slipping from 9.34 percent to 8.92 percent between November and December.

Still, there were some bright spots for all of these companies.  Hitwise’s release stated, "Google’s percentage of upstream traffic grew for the Automotive, Shopping and Travel categories.  Bing saw double-digit growth among all four categories [Automotive, Shopping, Travel, and Health] and Yahoo! Search saw double-digit growth in the Shopping category . . ."

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