The increasing popularity of Microsoft’s Bing search engine fueled growth in US consumers’ usage of Microsoft Sites for online searches during January 2010, according to comScore qSearch data.
Micrsoft Grows at Google, Yahoo Expense
Despite a slight monthly decrease in its search share, from 65.7% of the core search market in December 2009 to 65.4% of the core search market in January 2010, Google still comfortably dominated US online searches. Yahoo Sites retained the number two spot, although its share dropped from 17.3% to 17%. Microsoft Sites appear to have benefited from Google and Yahoo’s reduced market share, retaining third place but growing its monthly share from 10.7% to 11.3%. Slight changes in the market share percentages of Ask Network and AOL LLC Network effectively canceled each other out.
Number of Microsoft Searches Grows Dramatically
Americans conducted 15.2 billion core searches in January 2010, up 3% from 14.7 billion in December 2009. Google Sites accounted for 9.9 billion of those searches, a 2% drop from 9.7 billion a month earlier. The number of core searches conducted on Yahoo Sites also fell 2%, from 2.58 billion to 2.54 billion.
Although Microsoft Sites retained their third-place ranking for total number of core searches, Americans conducted 9% more searches using Microsoft Sites in January 2010 (1.71 billion) than in December 2009 (1.58 billion). Ask Network experienced 5% growth, but still had a relatively low number of total core searches, 574 million compared to 545 million a month earlier.
Bing, Facebook Search Queries Grow Sharply
In the January 2010 analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites led the search market with more than 14 billion search queries, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.7 billion queries and Microsoft Sites with 1.8 billion searches. Bing experienced large growth during the month with an 11% increase in query volume to reach more than 1.5 billion searches. Craigslist jumped one position to number six with 636 million searches, while Facebook grew to 395 million searches, representing a 13% increase from the previous month.
Bing Continues Strong ’09 Growth
Bing experienced strong growth from its June 2009 launch through the end of the year, according to comScore. The introduction of Bing in June 2009 provided an immediate, measurable boost to the search market penetration of Microsoft Sites. Between December 2008 and December 2009, market share for Microsoft Sites as a whole increased from 8.3% to 10.7% of all search engine queries. Virtually all of that growth occurred in the second half of 2009 and is attributable to consumers adopting Bing.
About the Survey: comScore qSearch data captures consumer search behavior at more than 150 search properties in 37 individual countries and worldwide, measuring the full breadth and depth of consumer search activity.
