Research firms Neilsen Online and Hitwise have released traffic information that shows strong Google growth in the US market. Google’s audience through its variety of web properties grew by a million from June to July to 129 million (Google has the largest audience in the US through its properties like Google.com and YouTube.com). But even more damning for its rivals (namely Microsoft and Yahoo), and arguably for the webmaster community, is the information Hitwise released today about the most coveted traffic of all: search traffic. Hitwise announced that Google has crossed the 70% mark (they cite 70.77%) which is up 10% from July of last year and 2% from June of this year. Here’s the rest of the search landscape that Google dominates:

• Google – 70.77%
• Yahoo – 18.65%
• MSN/Live – 5.36%
• Ask – 3.53%

And here’s a graph from Hitwise: