14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s search/decision engine is outpacing rivals and future partners when it comes down to growth rate in the United States, according to statistics provided by Internet metrics company Nielsen. It appears that the Redmond company’s overhauled search engine feeding off the death of Live Search is indeed a match for its competitors, and the increased volume of users binging is an illustrative example in this regard. Bing’s growth is of course fueled in part by the quality of the service and by the “novelty item” aura, which has not yet subsided since the official launch of Bing earlier this year. For August 2009, Nielsen indicated that Bing had a month-over-month growth of 22.1%, namely approximately seven times more than Google.
Bing managed to grab 10.7% of all searches in the US in August 2009. For the same month, Yahoo had 16% while Google 64.6%. A total of 10.8 billion searches were performed by users in the US in the past month, and of course, Google grabbed the lion’s share. Approximately seven billion of all queries were entered into Google, some 1.7 billion in Yahoo, and 1.15 billion in Bing. Bing’s share of searchers jumped 22.1% compared to the previous month, July. While Google has a growth of just 2.6%, Yahoo lost market share, by 4.2% (via CNet).
Of course, Microsoft and Yahoo are currently laboring for Bing to start serving all searches on Yahoo properties. While the search engine alliance is being scrutinized by antitrust authorities in the United States, the marriage between the two services would create a hybrid with over 26% search share, almost half that of Google.
Bing is undoubtedly superior to Live Search, and if Microsoft continues to raise the quality bar for its decision/search engine, flooring the innovation pedal, the Bing Yahoo search hybrid has palpable chances to bite hard into Google’s dominance. This week, the Redmond company indicated that it was yet to decelerate the introduction of innovations into Bing, as it unveiled Bing Visual Search via Silverlight.