Bing is continuing to make inroads on Google’s dominance of the US search market, according to new data from Compete.
Bing-powered Market Share Grows 8%
Between September and October 2010, the market share for Bing-powered search (which includes Yahoo as well as Bing) increased 8.5%, from 25.8% to 28%. Meanwhile, Google’s still-dominant market share slipped 3.4%, from 70% to 67.6%.
Google’s search share dropped even more compared to October 2009, when it stood 7% higher at 72.7% (Bing did not officially debut until June 2010). Microsoft Search represented most of Bing’s increases in monthly search share (up 12.8% from 12.5% to 14.1%), and dramatically improved in yearly search share (up 38.2% from 10.9%).
Bing-powered Query Volume Grows 12%
The query volume for Bing-powered search engines grew 12.3% from September to October 2010, increasing from almost 3.9 million to more than 4.3 million. Dramatic 16.2% growth in month-over-month Microsoft query volume (almost 1.9 million to 2.2 million) drove most of this increase.
Google also experienced a slight decrease in month-over-month search query volume and increase in year-over-year query volume (less than 0.1% each). Microsoft search queries rose a substantial 48% from about 1.47 million in October 2009.
Microsoft Gains Visitors
Compete did not compile combined Bing-powered unique visitor totals. However, the only individual search engine with a significant month-over-month or year-over-year change in unique visitors was Microsoft. Between September and October 2010, Microsoft search visitor total grew 13.8%, from 65 million to 74 million. Compared to 60 million unique visitors in October 2009, Microsoft’s unique visitor total grew 23.3%.
comScore: Microsoft Explicit Core Searches Grow 7%
More than 16.6 billion US explicit core searches were conducted in October 2010, up 4% from about 16 billion in September 2010, according to data from comScore. Google Sites ranked first with 11 billion searches (up 4%), followed by Yahoo Sites in second with 2.7 billion (up 2%). Although Microsoft Sites came in third with 1.9 billion explicit core searches, this represented a 7% jump from the previous month’s total.
Rounding out the top five, Ask Network accounted for 598 million explicit core searches followed by AOL LLC Network with 346 million.
