According to informationweek.com, Google Inc. has widened the gap in market share between them and their closest competitors. The behemoth search engine's share of the search market reached 41.4 percent in January.

The next closest competitor (as usual) was Yahoo with a 28.7% share. They were followed by MSN (13.7%)and AOL (7.9%). Ask Jeeves, which announced a major rebranding initiative that including dumping their butler mascot and changing their brand name to ask.com, rounded out the top 5 with a 5.6% share.

Many SEO webmasters are secretly wishing, hoping, and maybe even praying for the steady assentof search engine newcomers like MSN and Ask.com because those engines seem to be friendlier to newer websites and mainstream SEO techniques (both white hatand black hat). Unfortunately for those poor souls, it looks like Google is gaining a stranglehold on search and will likely stay in that position for the foreseeable future.