Google is still the world's most used and liked search engine on the Internet but the competition is gaining ground according to analysis conducted by Keynote Systems. Keynote surveyed 2,000 web users to gain detailed information about their search engine user habits.

Google remains number one followed by Yahoo!. MSN, Ask Jeeves and Lycos rounded out the top five. The survey looked at usage of a serach engine, loyalty of the customer to the engine and general satisfaction with the results obtained from searches.

MSN, the search engine of software giant Microsoft, made the biggest improvement in the survey. Microsoft unveiled new technology late in 2004 and it appears to have paid off. MSN went from fifth in last year's survey to third place this year.

The survey found that users did not have a lot of loyalty to a particular search engine. Although 75 percent of those questioned said they had a favorite search engine, half of them say they will move on to a second search engine if they don't find the information they are looking for at the first site.

Local searches caused the most disappointment among users with 22 percent of users saying they were not able to find the local information they were looking for on their search engine of choice.

Regardless of the results, Google remains on top of the search engine game. It just shouldn't look back because someone may be gaining on it.