Figures releases by a web analyst reveal that Google ended 2007 by achieving a record breaking increase in its market share of search. The company reached a figure of 66% for the last month of the year, setting a new record high.

This figure is two percentage points higher than Google’s average for the year according to Hitwise. Over the course of 2007, Google improved its market share by seven per cent to 64%.

Industry commentators are putting Google’s success down to an increasing source of traffic to key sectors.

They point to search engines continuing to be the primary way internet users navigate to key industry categories. The report by Hitwise compared search usage results from December 2007 and the corresponding month from the year before to highlight double digit increases in travel, entertainment, business, finance and sports in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

Google’s nearest competitor was Yahoo! which has a market share approaching 21%. MSN and Ask.com achieved market share of 7.04% and 4.14% respectively.