Redmond, Washington — For the first time since it launch, Microsoft’s Bing and other Internet search services has outpaced Yahoo to claim the number two search engine position in the United States, according to Tuesday data from Nielsen.
According to a recent report released by Nielson, Microsoft’s Bing, MSN and Windows Live had a 13.9 percent share of US search volume in August, up 0.25 percent from July, while Yahoo! had a 13.1 percent share of US Internet searches, down from 14.6 percent in July, Nielsen said.
Since forging a deal with Microsoft to power Yahoo’s search engine, it was only a matter of time before Bing surpassed Yahoo. The search deal was part of Yahoo’s plans to focus on more important things like content and advertisement.
Nevertheless, Silicon Valley search engine leader Google still dominated the lucrative search and advertising market with a big 65.1 percent of searches, up 1 percent from the previous month and last year.
Over the past year, the number of individuals who use Bing has increased substantially. And year-over-year, Microsoft sites have expanded their search share from 10.7 percent in August 2009 to 13.9 percent in August 2010 while Yahoo! has fallen from 16.0 percent a year ago to its current 13.1 percent, Nielsen said.
As part of a 2009 search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, Bing last month officially started powering Yahoo’s search results in the U.S. and Canada.
“If we combined Bing-powered search in August pro-forma, it would represent a 26 percent share of search,” Nielsen said in a blog post.
Nielsen said its stats include search queries from users; it takes into account only those searches which have been conducted by typing directly into the search box, and not those triggered by user activity on the web. Statistics about search engine market share differ depending on the source, however.
While the number of users who use Yahoo and Bing fluctuate from month to month, but Google’s has remained relatively static over the past year. The 4th and 5th place on the list of the top search engines are captured by Ask.com and AOL, which each hold 2 percent of the market respectively.
However, comScore has so far not issued its search figures for August but the online tracking firm reported last month that Google had a 65.8 percent share of the US search market in July followed by Yahoo! with 17.1 percent and Microsoft sites with 11.0 percent. Moreover, last week, Hitwise said that Yahoo had 14.28 percent of searches in the U.S. in August, compared to 9.87 percent for Bing, and 71.59 percent for Google.