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.
“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.
It’s not weird since IE 7/8 has ‘Live’ as the default search engine so when anyone search within IE, it’ll redirect to ‘Bingo’ unless he/she is using ‘Google/Yahoo Toolbars.
Anyway, I think folks @ Microsoft will shout out loud: Bingo 🙂
Why is there so much emotion (positive and negative) when a news story focuses on Microsoft? Let’s stick with the facts and how they might or might not impact us. In what ways is Bing better or worse than Google or Yahoo? How will (or should) Bing’s introduction affect marketers? Here are my newest thoughts on Bing, Yahoo!, and Google.
I thought there is a new search engine coming to town as I watched my stats increasing bing search visitors. I discovered that it is just a remake of msn search and live search.
i’m very interested. how i can get it for paste to my blog ???????
Yahoo should change there name from yahoo to yaya no more! CRAP
Yahoo is crap. You can not find anything on it. I do not know what happen to yahoo but it is bad. You do a search for something and you get really bed sites. Google and bing is the one for me!!!!!!
I have used Bing 2 or 3 time but gave up, I get as much out of it as I did Yahoo and I don’t use it anymore.
from where I am bing has just rehashed the old ms search reults. Bing travel is even worse – at least here in the uk it is. If anybody is going to take on google it needs to be someone new and fresh – twitter search perhaps, results from people rather than robots
What happened to live.com… and who uses yahoo anyway…. cannot find anything relevant anyways
It should be interesting to look at the statistics of Bing in 6 months……I like to see alternative search engines…….its good for the internet.
I expect it to fall away as I think Yahoo still provides a better search experience – both with more relevant results and adverts.
not bad. maby yahoo and msft should work together
Yahoo has failed to innovate and the Microsoft-Yahoo deal brouhaha following the replacement of Yahoo’s founder and CEO put it in a negative light. Bing attempts to be a simple and graceful search engine by eradicating link infested search engines,
I do like Bing, though have not switched yet – old habits die hard. That was because I did not perceive MS as a search specialist. But now seems like they have taken it very seriously and that is good (not to forget that they have the $$ to do it if needed).
I’ll wait and watch for some more time if it turns out to be good, make the switch (don’t like google corp that much – even though their search is great).