May went Google's way, according to new statistics from Experience Hitwise.  Indeed, although the numbers supplied by comScore and Nielsen earlier this month suggested almost the exact opposite, Experian Hitwise's data indicates that Google gained market share while Yahoo and Bing lost.

So how big was the search giant's (alleged) gain?  Experian Hitwise believes Google saw its market share increase from 71.40 percent to 72.17 percent on a month-over-month basis, which works out to an increase of 1.1 percent.

Yahoo, meanwhile, is supposed to have seen its share drop from 14.96 percent to 14.43 percent for a loss equal to about 3.5 percent.  Then Bing wound up in slightly better shape, experiencing a 2.1 percent drop that took it from a market share of 9.43 percent down to 9.23 percent.

Those figures represent pretty bad news for Steve Ballmer and Carol Bartz.  Their companies are of course supposed to combine forces in order to make a dent in Google's dominance, and now - assuming they can pull that off at all - they'll be facing an even steeper uphill climb.

Anyway, if you're interested in what contributed to those final numbers, Experian Hitwise shared a little more information in an official release, stating "Google's percentage of upstream traffic grew for the Automotive, Shopping and Travel categories.  Yahoo! Search saw gains in the Automotive and Shopping categories.  Bing saw triple-digit growth in two categories - Health and Shopping . . ."

As always, we'll be sure to see what happens next month.