Bing increases Search market share again – Google uncatchable?

Have you used Bing yet? Microsoft’s new and improved search engine is the company’s best effort at search yet, and it has been gaining not only plaudits but also traffic in the two months since it launched. In light of this, and the new partnership with Yahoo!, is there any chance of Bing catching up with Google in the search sector?

Microsoft launched Bing on June 1, replacing its predecessor Live Search. The search engine immediately gained fans and finished June having snatched some all-important market share from Google and Yahoo! At the time it was thought that could just be a natural reaction to a new product launching on the Web, with people trying Bing out to see what all the fuss was all about.

But it seems not.

The traffic results for July are in and they show that Microsoft Bing has continued to gain market share. StatCounter’s figures for the U.S. search market shows Bing managed a rise of 1 percentage point to 9.41 percent. Yahoo! saw a small decline, dropping from 11.04 percent to 10.95 percent. But neither are yet troubling Google which, although dropping slightly to 77.54 percent clearly still dominates the search market.

Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder of StatCounter, said:

Bing continues to make slow but steady progress but the combined Yahoo figures suggests that the deal announced last week will have to demonstrate major future synergies if it is to make any dent in Google’s dominance.

Cullen is referring to the Microsoft/Yahoo! deal which was finally finalized last week after over a year of on/off, will they/won’t they machinations. Rather than being a buyout as was being chased once, this deal was more of a partnership, with Microsoft providing the search results for Yahoo! with Yahoo! handling the selling of premium advertising for both companies.

The question now is whether this tie-up will help Bing close the gap on Google. It will have an immediate effect, of course, giving the combined effort a 20. 36 percent market share straight out of the box. But whether that can be improved upon at the expense of Google is still not clear.

Regardless, the Search sector certainly looks like getting a lot more interesting soon. While Google may still be light years ahead, we at least have a contender taking to the ring. And that contender is Microsoft.

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