New York — Microsoft’s efforts to promote its new Internet search engine Bing appears to be yielding fruits — at the expense of partner Yahoo, but it still remains well behind a so-far unbeatable foe in its battle with Google Inc. According to latest figures from market tracking firm comScore, which shows Redmond software giant’s Bing is making significant inroads against Google and Yahoo in the U.S. search engine market, grabbing 11.5 percent of all search queries in the U.S. in February, slightly higher than its 11.3 percent share the prior month, the Web analytics firm said.
Microsoft’s share of U.S. search traffic augmented to 11.5% in February from 10.7% in January, according to figures released Wednesday by market watcher comScore. Meanwhile, software makers search partner Yahoo, currently the number two player in the market, witnessed its share declined to 16.8 percent in February from 17.0 percent in January, comScore said.
But market leader Google meanwhile remains the search engine champ, enjoying a minuscule gain of just .1%, from 65.4% in January to 65.5% in February, comScore reported.
(Credit: ComScore)
Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research, is not amazed that Bing has been slow to make its mark in a market so dominated by Google.
“Even if Bing is attracting traction, growth would be slow,” Gottheil said. “People do not change without some impetus. Google is not broken. Why fix it? At best, it is going to be a long road for Microsoft.”
Trailing the list, Ask.com’s share fell to 3.7 percent of all search requests, from 3.8 percent while AOL’s was steady with a 2.5 percent slice of all searches in February.
While month-to-month examination show incremental changes in the market, the longer-term view suggests that Microsoft is gaining significant search share while Google stagnates and Yahoo fades.
Microsoft’s gains in search are in part due to heavy promotional efforts the company has undertaken to publicize Bing with a 100-million-dollar advertising campaign in a bid to challenge search juggernaut Google. The latest is a complete makeover its MSN home page that features a significantly more prominent Bing search box and direct integration with Facebook.
Yahoo and Microsoft announced a 10-year Web search and advertising partnership in July that set the stage for a joint offensive against Google. According to the pact, Yahoo will use Microsoft’s search engine on its own sites while providing the exclusive global sales force for premium advertisers.
Microsoft and Google have been routinely upgrading their online search service features in what has thus far been a wonky duel favoring the Mountain View, California-based Internet king over the software giant.
Microsoft has also embellished Bing in recent months with online travel tools, visual search, and a tie-in with the Wolfram Alpha math engine. That will further boost Microsoft’s share of the search market.
As for Google, its control of the search advertising market is evoking scrutiny from antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe, and many of its recent moves to grow revenue come not from attempts to further build search share but from attempts in exploiting new markets like e-mail and cloud-based software such as Google Apps.
The outcome: Microsoft is likely to keep winning on its search gains, at least in the near term, while Yahoo struggles and Google idles.