comScore on Friday reported that Microsoft's Bing gained ground on Google in the Internet search market in January.

Google Sites continued to leed the U.S. explicit core search market in January with 65.6 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 16.1 percent and Microsoft Sites with 13.1 percent (up 1.1 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.4 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL LLC Network with 1.7 percent.

Nearly 17 billion explicit core searches were conducted in January, according to comScore. Google Sites ranked first with 11.1 billion searches. Yahoo! Sites came in second with 2.7 billion, followed by Microsoft Sites with 2.2 billion (up 13 percent), Ask Network with 576 million and AOL LLC Network with 296 million.

Nearly 17 billion online searches were conducted in the United States in January, with Google tending to 11.1 billion of them, comScore said.