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 find Yahoo clustered on their main page whereas Bing is simple, less distracting. I feel that it is a lot like Google, except that Bing puts a different beautiful background image. That image changes every day. Also, for some keywords, Bing provides more relevant search results. If I can’t find what I am seeking on Google, I will give Bing a try. I use all three search engines, Yahoo, Google and now Bing. I must say that I am stunned to see it pass Google in such a short amount of time. Is it temporary, short term. I guess time will tell on a long term basis.
    Sherlock Home

  2. I’ve been seeing the same trend on my blogs. Really surprising to see Bing raise so fast.
    I guess Microsoft got some tricks up their sleeves to get people to use their search engine.

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  5. Very interesting news. Google always stresses that content is king when actually Google is King because they control the content and can determine which content gets found by users. Now Bing steps up. They are still lightyears away from Google, but at least, it’s something. I hope Bing keeps it up.

  6. Very good information for us.

    Hope Yahoo now will shake off its orthodoxity.

  7. Ever try to get a site listed on Yahoo? They don’t have a clue. Not anymore.

  8. How do I get to bing? There’s just alot of articles listed.

  9. Microsoft has redirected all MSN-Live search over to bing, so it’s no longer being split between those latter tow – it’s all showing up as bing.com. Now if Statcounter would just allow me to turn off all the Google country variations! I really don’t care to see Google hits divided up that way.

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  14. We need another option, not always Google; we hope that Bing would be!

  15. This result tells me only about the effect of a US$ 100 million marketing campaign making people try a new product. How many people will remain loyal to the service after initial trial is still a mistery!

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  17. Very interesting! I don’t think it could ever be as big/popular as Google though, but who knows…!

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