Bing Overtakes Yahoo!

Microsoft’s Bing overtook Yahoo! as the number two search engine in the United States and worldwide on Thursday (4th June) according to our StatCounter Global Stats data. Bing grabbed market share from Google.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-US-daily-20090529-20090604

“It remains to be seen if Bing falls away after the initial novelty and promotion but at first sight it looks like Microsoft is on to a winner,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that he wanted Microsoft to become the second biggest search engine within five years. Following the breakdown in talks to acquire Yahoo! at a cost of $40bn it looks as if he may have just achieved that with Bing much sooner and a lot cheaper than anticipated.”

Our analysis finds that in the US Bing leapfrogged Yahoo to take second place on 16.28%. Yahoo! has 10.22%. Google still commands the US search engine market with 71.47%.

Globally Bing at 5.62% has taken a narrow lead over Yahoo! (5.13%). Google worldwide retains 87.62% of the market.

StatCounter Global Stats, a free online service which captures market share battles of search engines, browsers and operating systems including mobile, was launched in March this year.

The StatCounter Global Stats research data is based on four billion pageloads per month. Other regional and country breakdowns can be viewed at: http://gs.statcounter.com

Full press release available here.

UPDATE 11 June 2009:
While Bing has fallen back to third place behind Google and Yahoo! it is winning market share for Microsoft against its two main rivals in the US and worldwide according to our latest analysis.

We analyzed search engine market share two weeks before and after the formal launch of Bing on May 28th (14th May to the 27th May and the 28th May to 10th June). For the US market it found:
Google decreased from 78.68% to 77.94% (-0.74%)
Yahoo decreased from 11.46% to 10.76% (-0.7%)
Microsoft (Bing, MSN Search and Live Search) increased from 7.4% to 9% (+1.6%)
(See here and here)

“It is too early to say what the long term result will be but this is a creditable performance by Bing,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO StatCounter. “It remains to be seen what happens to Bing after user curiosity and the reported $100m advertising budget runs out.”

Worldwide, comparing the two weeks before and after the Bing launch, StatCounter reports a similar trend with Microsoft taking market share.
Google decreased from 89.81% to 89.69% (-0.12%)
Yahoo decreased from 5.34% to 5.1% (-0.24%)
Microsoft (Bing, MSN Search and Live Search) increased from 3.08% to 3.5% (+0.42%)
(See here and here)

Full press release available here.

168 Comments

  1. Pingback: Microsoft-Yahoo!: la chiave internazionale (che non si trova!)
  2. I don’t like the part of bing that shows site preview because this can hurt entering to websites.

  3. WOW !!!! Great News. I love BING 😀 . And as far i know Bing and Yahoo committed to work together.

  4. Now Bing cooperates with Yahoo search. So, is it time for Google to feel fear? I would say NO.

  5. Pingback: Was The Search Battle Already Over? | Regular Geek
  6. Pingback: Deskvu — Blog — Bing Becomes the Main Alternative to Google Search
  7. This is essentially Microsoft’s long-awaited takeover of Yahoo’s web search portal, but packaged in a way that will be more palatable to Yahoo — minimising the hurt caused to Yahoo’s tender pride. It’s a take-over by another name.

    “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

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