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. Bing cannot compete with Google. Bing sells itself as a smarter search engine than yahoo and Google, and asserts they are annoying. But what is so different about Bing? I decided to test Bing against Google this morning, and this is what I found:
    I searched for info on a rare brain disorder (Hepato Cerebral Degeneration of the brain/non-Wilson type). I typed “hepatodegenerationofthebrain”into both Google and Bing; Bing “found no results”, while Google was intuitive, separated the words, and offered me 2 choices that were related to my search. Then, I typed in ‘hepato cerebral degeneration of the brain’; Bing came up with sites about Wilson’s disease, which is not the disorder I am researching…while Google not only corrected my spelling (hepatocerebral degeneration), all 10 results on the first page were about the disorder. Only 4 of the 10 results Bing offered me were actually on the subject I was searching. And the first 3 listed were not.
    So, tell me again why I should use Bing?

  2. Bing has disappeared from the list of search engines that are sending visitors to my blog.

  3. the web is such an overwhelming collection of information that search has to improve and become more relevant, hopefully this will reduce googles complacency

  4. I don’t like bing. Its result is different from google and yahoo. I don’t know it is bad or good, but I don’t like it.

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  8. Bing cannot catch Yahoo and Google. Microsoft will lose much money with this project.

  9. I don’t like the part of bing that shows site preview because this can hurt entering to websites.

  10. 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.

  11. Microsoft should concentrate on trying to deliver an operating system that we deserve, not just repackage the old (vista) with a new name (windows 7), and launch a multi-million ad campaign. Leave the search engine market to the exalted LORD GOOGLE!!! In google we trust.

  12. Pingback: Bing Overtakes Yahoo | Gadgets World
  13. Bing.com seems to have been owned by Lu Stasko and offered personal notification device. You can look up bing on the way back machine at archive.org. It probably was bought up by microsoft.

  14. Yahoo’s biggest mistake is trying to beat Google. They should have stuck with its directory, it is what made them unique. They were the first directory on the Internet in 1994. Now, Bing is trying to beat Google and Yahoo in search. If only management had more focus, unfortunately, they are blind.

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