14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's search engine, Bing has passed up Yahoo, according to the latest data from The Nielsen Company, and is now the second search engine in the United States.
Last month, Bing grew from 13.6 percent to 13.9 percent of the US search market while Yahoo went down from 14.3 percent to 13.1 percent, while Google went up from 64.2 percent in July to 65.0 percent, keeping it's pole position.
“In terms of a year-over-year comparison, Google has seen little change in its share of search while Yahoo has seen a small but steady decline,” according to Nielsen's posting.
“MSN/Windows Live/Bing's share has grown from 10.7 percent in August 2009 to 13.9 percent (a delta increase of 3.2 percent or a relative increase of 30 percent).”
These results were somehow to be expected because in August, Microsoft and Yahoo made a deal and announced that Yahoo's search results will be powered by Bing in the United States and Canada.
Absorbing Yahoo's market-share gives Bing 27 to 30 percent against Google's 65-71 percent (depending on which firm's data you use).
“Nielsen's search data only counts genuine intentional searches that people type into a search box,” the company noted.
“It does not include non-intended or 'contextual' searches that are automatically generated by search engines based on a person's browsing behavior.”
According to a chart from Nielsen, Bing started to climb in the last six months and since October, it has gained over 3%, while Google has lost over 1% and Yahoo has lost over 2%.
There is data that contradicts Nielsen's like comScore's or Experian Hitwise's, which estimated Bing's US market-share at 9.86 percent, behind Yahoo at 14.43 percent and Google at 71.43 percent.
Other analysts, like Youssef Squali over at Jefferies & Co., have suggested that Bing's market-share rise is beginning to level off.
Anyway the figures published by Nielsen confirm that there are now two serious players on the search-engine stage, even though Bing has a long way to go before becoming a threat for Google.