Nielsen: Bing's search engine market share increases while Google and Yahoo continue to decline
Nielsen: Bing's search engine market share increases while Google and Yahoo continue to decline
For a while now, Microsoft has been attempting to attract users with its Bing search engine and gain a larger portion of the market share. Nielsen search engine market share statistics show that Microsoft may be headed in the right direction of increasing its share in the marketplace.
According to Nielsen, the market share of Bing reached an all-time high in February 2010 with 12.5% of the overal search market, representing a 15% increase from Bing's market share in January 2010. Microsoft has enjoyed consistent growth since April 2009 when it had a market share of 9.9%, but the jump from 10.9% in January to 12.5% in February is the biggest leap yet:
| Top 10 Search Providers for February 2010, Ranked by Searches (U.S.) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Provider | Searches (000) | Share of Searches |
| All Search | 9,175,357 | 100.0% | |
| 1 | Google Search | 5,981,044 | 65.2% |
| 2 | Yahoo! Search | 1,294,261 | 14.1% |
| 3 | MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search | 1,142,364 | 12.5% |
| 4 | AOL Search | 206,969 | 2.3% |
| 5 | Ask.com Search | 175,074 | 1.9% |
| 6 | My Web Search | 91,288 | 1.0% |
| 7 | Comcast Search | 55,122 | 0.6% |
| 8 | Yellow Pages Search | 27,002 | 0.3% |
| 9 | NexTag Search | 26,462 | 0.3% |
| 10 | WhitePages.com Network Search | 24,681 | 0.3% |
| Source: The Nielsen Company | |||
The increase coincides with the announcement made last month, giving Yahoo and Microsoft regulatory approval for their search alliance. While Bing's numbers look promising, Yahoo's market share has actually been declining since last year. Unfortunately, the combination of Yahoo and Bing may not make a big difference for market leader Google who has been enjoying a 64%-67% market share. In February 2010, Google had a market share of 65.2%. By comparison, Yahoo had a market share of 14.1% the same month. A Microsoft and Yahoo search market merge does not currently present a huge threat to Google.
However, it is important for SEO companies to pay attention to Microsoft and Yahoo, who combined will have about 25% of the search engine market. In all likelihood, the trend of Bing's market share growing will continue but probably not at the same rate as it has. Google will still remain the king of search.
In spite of Google's dominance, Bing has a few areas where it tends to outperform Google's search algorithm, specifically in providing real-time updates to airfare schedules, ticket prices and shopping items. The question is whether Google will try to improve on that area. Another area where Bing is capitalizing is the release of Bing Maps, a competing service to Google Maps
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