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. I really dont like Bing. The only reason it leapfrogged yahoo! is simply because people where curious because of the media attention.

    But, first impressions, not good.

  2. It does not at all surprise me that Bing overtook Yahoo. Looking at hits for my sites, few come from Yahoo… and with Bing’s television ads blitz it is going to get hits from the curious. Even I checked it out and was not at all impressed. When the TV ads disappear, so will Bing and MS will return to trying to reinvent the wheel.

  3. I think it’s not a good news for webmasters if a new search engine is coming.

  4. I am back on this blog but I love Bing….
    so stop being google but start bing……….

  5. Pingback: Basic Sunday: Bing – Der Kampf um die Vorherrschaft im Web | Basic Thinking Blog
  6. I noticed some more traffic coming to my sites from Bing. Didn’t know what Bing was until I started reading the buzz about it on the internet.

  7. That’s a good news for the users and hopefully a more tighter competition in search will only make things better.

  8. Real hot-off-the-press news this – many thanks. Bing seems to return similar results to Google, at least on their first pages. But Bing seem to be shy about giving details for optimising sites for their search engine. Does anyone have any information?

  9. Pingback: Bing beats Yahoo! - Bing Daily
  10. Oh man…I knew Google was the world leader but I didn’t know it was by that margin…wow! No wonder they control the world wide web.

  11. Wow, quite impressive. On the other hand, the results suck, I have to use IE at work and it defaults to bing, not so good.

  12. Pingback: Bing Overtakes Yahoo in Search Market Share
  13. Pingback: Bing Rapidly Overtakes Yahoo Search (For Now)
  14. sooooo…. Google still kicks everybody’s butt.

    Bing hasn’t really changed the world I guess. I see Bing as an improvement over the old Live search engine but it still isn’t Google. Sorry.

  15. Bing is catching yahoo and Google in the search world and I found the background very much interesting and cool. This Decision search engine will provide a unique way to search information and the details given by STATCOUNTER is very much interesting.Looking forward for more news coming from Search Engine Arena.

  16. No way?! I guess with a network the size that Microsoft has, you’ve got the ability to do something like this, but the results with BING have been less than impressive for me. It will be interesting to see how BING does going forward.

  17. interesting… i am waiting other market research company such as Neilson to compare result with statcounter.

  18. The big question now is whether Microsoft will take a big chunk out of Yahoo’s paid search revenue, as mentioned here: http://domusinc.blogspot.com/2009/06/does-microsoft-bing-change-paid-search.html

  19. Hi
    nice information you have…so great site…

    regards
    GOOGLE EXPERTS

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