Google has taken a heavy blow in terms of the volume of searches performed in February 2010 over that of January, as the overall amount of queries performed by users in the United States dropped. And while both Google and Yahoo saw their respective shares of the US search market shrink, Bing continues on its upward trajectory. Statistics offered by Internet metrics outfit The Nielsen Company reveal that Bing has grown to almost match Yahoo in terms of share on the US search market.

According to Nielsen data, Bing accounts for no less than 12.5% of all the queries performed by US users in February, a consistent increase from the 10.9% the search/decision engine was credited with the month before. However, in terms of the actual volume of searches, the growth is less impressive. Bing went from 1.116 billion in January to 1.142 billion in February.

What is impressive is the amount of searches lost by Google. “An estimated 6.8 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 66.3% of all search queries conducted during the given time period,” Nielsen revealed in January. For the month of February, the company notes that, “An estimated 6.0 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 65.2% of all search queries conducted during the given time period.”

However, Google’s drop in query volume can be easily explained by the shrinking of the total number of searches. While Nielsen reported 10.2 billion searches in January, it said that only 9.1 billion queries were entered into search engines the past month. Contributing to this gap is undoubtedly also the fact that February was a good three days shorter than January this year.

Yahoo’s share also dropped to 14.1% from 14.5% the previous month. But, more importantly, Yahoo searches went down from 1.488 billion to 1.294 billion. Microsoft and Yahoo continue to work to build their search alliance, a partnership designed to catapult Bing at an over 25% market share immediately and make it a viable rival to Google.