14 DAY TRIAL // Bing has been launched for less than four months now and Microsoft is already planning Bing 2.0. But until then the “1.0” version seems to be doing just fine. Whether it's because of the new features and overall improved search experience or the $100 million ad money Microsoft poured into an all-out marketing campaign, Bing seems to be somewhat of a success with three consecutive months of consistent growth, culminating with August when it reached 9.3 percent of the search market share according to data from comScore.
The share is a 0.4 percent point increase over the previous month, when it managed to attract 8.9 percent of the searches, and an even bigger jump from June when it had only 8 percent of the market. The growth represents a 16 percent increase in market share since May, the month before Bing was launched. The new numbers are in line with previous data released by Nielsen, which pegged the revamped search engine at 10.7 percent of the search market.
For the other players things are relatively calm, with Google losing a fraction, going from 64.7 percent of the searches in July to 64.4 percent last month. Since May Google has lost less than 1 percent points, dropping from 65 percent that month. Yahoo maintained its position with a flat 19.3 percent while Ask.com also held to its 3.9 percent and AOL dropped 0.1 percent points to 3.0 percent.
While Google still enjoys a very solid lead, even against Microsoft and Yahoo combined, Bing actually grew faster in absolute numbers with a 31.9 percent increase in its overall search volume year over year compared to Google's 21.6 percent and Yahoo's 16.8 percent. While, by itself, Bing's growth is pretty substantial, it's going to have to do a lot better if it actually wants to have a chance to challenge Google anytime soon. Still, if it can keep up the momentum in the short term and manage a healthy merger with Yahoo search in the long term, Microsoft may actually have a shot at acquiring a significant portion of the market.