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

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  6. I’m not too surprised…BING is pumping money into their engine but most folks I talk to just aren’t seeing enough of a difference to switch from their beloved Google or Yahoo queries.

  7. Very useful information.

    Bing is doing a lot better than the old search engine, but still Google is doing great. I hope slowly some search engines get a bigger share.

  8. It’s good to see that Google has (or will at some point) have at least some kind of run for their money as Yahoo has been dropping in significance for years now

  9. Google finds content way before other engines. Its rediculous how long it takes the others to index a new website.

  10. I have noticed bing in my stats more and more. They are doing some great advertising also. Wonder how they will do against Google in the long run.

  11. Hmm, it’s going to take a lot for me to not use Google as my main search engine. It’s the best out there for finding relevant information. I doubt Bing will ever out compete them. I guess we’ll see.

  12. Yes, I am seeing a lot of my visitors now coming from Bing (more than what were coming from the old MSN Live engine) but it may be more because now Bing seems to be well integrated as a “default” in many Microsoft apps.
    As of now I guess Google is still No 1, with Yahoo at No 2 and Bing at No 3.
    As for Ask, I hardly see any visitors from it nowadays.

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  14. Worldwide, comparing the two weeks before and after the Bing launch, StatCounter reports a similar trend with Microsoft taking market share.

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  16. I was using Live services since quiet some time. I like meaning search and some other small stuff from Live. But the first time, I see bettter results from Bing for my query “hotkeys undo redo” over Google. Looks like there is a trend going here if it is true, google has to improve their algorithems to keep-up. Now I can recommend someone to go try out bing!

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