Google led search-engine traffic in April, with 65.4% of Web searches taking place on Google-owned search sites, according to the research firm ComScore.

The April 2011 data reflect the impact of Yahoo! Search Direct, Yahoo!?s new feature that delivers search results in real-time while users type their query. Yahoo! Search Direct was available only on Yahoo! U.S. Web Search for the month of April.

According to ComScore, Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in April with 65.4 percent market share, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 15.9 percent (up 0.2 percentage points) and Microsoft Sites with 14.1 percent (up 0.2 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 3.0 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.5 percent.

More than 16.2 billion explicit core searches were conducted in April, the research firm said. Google Sites ranked first with 10.7 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.6 billion, Microsoft Sites with 2.3 billion, Ask Network with 491 million and AOL, Inc. with 248 million.

In the U.S., Google Sites accounted for 64.2 percent of total core search queries conducted (up 0.1 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 17.9 percent and Microsoft Sites with 13.8 percent (up 0.2 percentage points). Ask Network comprised 2.7 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.4 percent.