Mike Andrew Consulting

Bing Makes Search Inroad

By mike, Mar 19 in blog with 0 comments

MSN/WindowsLive/Bing experienced approximately 15% growth in its share of US searches in February 2010, according to The Nielsen Company.

MSN/WindowsLive/Bing accounted for 12.5% of approximately 9.17 billion searches last month, or 1.14 billion searches. This put MSN/WindowsLive/Bing in third place overall. Google Search led all search providers with a 65.2% search share, or about 5.98 billion searches. Yahoo Search came in second with a 14.1% search share, or about 1.29 billion searches.
No other US web search provider in the top 10 for February 2010 had a double-digit search share. AOL Search, the fourth-most-popular provider last month, had a 2.3% share, or 206,969 searches.

Graph showing search engine popularity

Top Four Providers Remain Same, Bing Gains Traction
The same companies made up the top four US search providers in February 2010 as did in January 2010, according to previous figures from Nielsen. However, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing improved moderately from a 10.9% share and 1.12 billion searches.

This increase appears to have been at the expense of Google and Yahoo. Google Search accounted for 66.3% of 10.27 billion total US web searches in January 2010, or 6.8 billion. Yahoo Search came in second with a 14.5% search share, or 1.49 billion searches.

comScore Registers Minimal Bing Growth
However, Microsoft Search (primarily represented by Bing, as is MSN/WindowsLive/Bing), only registered 0.2-percentage-point search market share growth in January, according to comScore qSearch data.

comScore, which tracks the US core search market using different methods than Nielsen, indicates that Google Sites continued to hold roughly two-thirds of the core search market (65.5%) in February 2010, rising 0.1 percentage points from the previous month. Yahoo Sites came in second, falling from 17% market share to 16.8%. Microsoft Sites retained their third place ranking with 11.5% market share, up from 11.3%. Ask Network and AOL LLC rounded out the monthly top five with essentially unchanged results from January 2010.

About the author

Mike Andrew has been working with the Internet and small business for over 12 years. Mike has been a keynote speaker at conventions and seminars and conducted social media training sessions all over the world. Mike has an extensive media background having worked in electronic media for over 30 years. Mike specialises in social media and Internet marketing strategy, SEO techniques and search engine marketing campaigns. His articles appear on numerous blogs around the web as well as national magazines.