Google and Yahoo gained the edge on Microsoft in the battle for eyeballs in the search engine arena during May, according to market watcher comScore.

Yahoo's search gains at the expense of its one-time suitor form the latest twist in a six-month soap opera which recently saw Yahoo pronouncing talks with Microsoft as dead in the water.

ComScore figures show Google way ahead of its two search rivals with 61.8 per cent of the market, racking up a 0.2 percentage point increase on April.

While the once mighty Yahoo could only muster 20.6 per cent of search market, the firm at least managed to achieve a 0.2 per cent improvement when compared to April.

Microsoft remains in third place accounting for just 8.5 per cent of May's search activity, dropping 0.6 percentage points from the 9.1 per cent in April.

Year-on-year comScore figures show Google's overall market share increasing by 28.4 per cent, compared to a two per cent decline for Yahoo and a 2.8 per cent rise for Microsoft.