Redmond, Washington — Microsoft’s slow-but-steady overture to the search engine market seems to be paying off, according to new data. The Redmond Vole’s new search engine Bing posted a slight increase in its share of the US search market in August, while Google Inc. continued to dominate the U.S. core Web search rankings in August, while rival Yahoo! Inc. stood a distant second, according to latest figures published by Internet data tracking firm comScore Inc. Tuesday.
In August 2009, Americans conducted more than 13.9 billion core searches, however, rather than repeating July’s performance by taking market share away from Yahoo, the second-place search engine and a major Microsoft partner, Bing in August strengthened its third-place share of the U.S. market by capturing 9.3% of queries, showing some growth at industry leader Google’s expense.
Bing picked up nearly a half a point of market share from July’s comScore figures at 9.3 percent, up from 8.9 the month before. Meanwhile, Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in August with 64.6 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (19.3 percent), and Microsoft Sites (9.3 percent). Ask Network captured 3.9 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 3.0 percent.
August 2009 U.S. Core Search Rankings:
| comScore Core Search Report* August 2009 vs. July 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch |
|||
| Core Search Entity | Share of Searches (%) | ||
| Jul-09 | Aug-09 | Point Change Aug-09 vs Jul-09 | |
| Total Core Search | 100.0% | 100.0% | NA |
| Google Sites | 64.7% | 64.6% | -0.1 |
| Yahoo! Sites | 19.3% | 19.3% | 0.0 |
| Microsoft Sites | 8.9% | 9.3% | 0.4 |
| Ask Network | 3.9% | 3.9% | 0.0 |
| AOL LLC Network | 3.1% | 3.0% | -0.1 |
* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.
Bing launched in June and has gained market in August, the third month in a row of modest gains, according to online tracking firm comScore.
Microsoft’s August performance was up from 8.9 percent in July, according to a research note from JP Morgan, which cited data from industry tracker comScore.
The small increase helped Microsoft gain ground against Google, but the latter still has a choke hold on the U.S. search market. Google remained the overwhelming leader of the lucrative US search and advertising market handled about 9 billion core searches in August, up 2% from 8.8 billion core searches conducted in July.
Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo continued to hold the number two overall U.S. core search ranking during August, with its sites combining to represent 19.3% of all searches, unchanged from the previous month. Yahoo saw a 2% rise in the number of core searches performed on its sites during August to 2.7 billion, according to the comScore figures.
Yahoo and Microsoft, after months of negotiations, announced a 10-year Web search and advertising partnership in late July under which Microsoft will place Bing on Yahoo’s Web properties, setting the stage for a joint offensive against Google. In exchange, Yahoo will receive the lion’s share of revenue from Bing searches that originate on Yahoo pages.
The agreement between the Internet portal and software giant, which will be subject to review by US anti-trust regulators, is expected to close in early 2010.
Currently, Bing’s visual search engine is in the beta stage and is limited to several search categories predetermined by Microsoft. But company officials believe the technology has big potential and could help Microsoft close the gap with Google.
Microsoft shares were up 1% in late-morning trading Tuesday, to $25.55.