Bing and Yahoo! sneak a larger search market share while Google dips

Even though Google has accused Bing of copying its search results and Yahoo!'s top brass have relabelled the firm a web portal rather than a search engine, new research shows the two steadily chipping away at Mountain View's coveted search lead.

The latest Experian Hitwise data on search trends shows Bing and Yahoo!'s search market shares upped by five and three percentage points, respectively, between January and February 2011, while Google's market share slipped by two per cent in the same timeframe.

Bing.com search grew from 12.81 per cent to 13.49 per cent while Yahoo! search upped from 14.62 per cent to 14.99 per cent and Bing-powered search, which includes both firms, moved from 27.44 per cent to 28.48 per cent.

And as Bing search grew by five percentage points, compared to Bing-powered search's four percentage points, it would appear Bing has been moving forward without cannibalising Yahoo!'s user base.

Google's search market share, however, fell from 67.95 per cent to 66.69 per cent.

"Yahoo! Search and Bing achieved the highest success rates in February 2011," Experian Hitwise announced in a prepared statement.

"This means that for both search engines, more than 81 per cent of searches executed resulted in a visit to a website. Google achieved a success rate of 66 per cent."

But while Bing and Yahoo! are admittedly making in-roads, tech pundits don't expect the two to topple Google's search stranglehold anytime soon - particularly as Mountain View's market share is more than double that of its rivals and recent research has shown that web users eye Google's sponsored ads and search results longer than Redmond's.

Source: www.bigmouthmedia.com