Nielsen: Bing Continues to Gain Search Share

By Geoff Duncan September 17, 2009

Nielsen: Bing Continues to Gain Search Share

There’s no question that Google is still by far the dominant player in the Internet search market, but according to media metrics giant The Nielsen Company, Microsoft’s Bing continues to increase its share of the U.S. search market. The latest figures from Nielsen show that, during August 2009, the number of queries handled by Bing increased by 22 percent compared to the previous month, and Bing has now cracked the double digit mark, accounting for 10.7 percent of all U.S. Internet searches, if one rolls in MSN Search and Windows Live search.

Google still remains the top dog, accounting for some 64.6 percent of U.S. searches during August; Yahoo accounted for an even 16 percent of searches. AOL Search and Ask.com rounded out the top five, accounting for 3.1 percent and 1.7 percent of U.S. search queries during August, respectively.

Although Bing seems to be experiencing big gains, they seem to be coming at the expense of Yahoo Search, which saw its month-to-month share of the U.S. search market decline by 4.2 percent during August. Most other search engines experienced month-on-month growth in the number of queries they handled during the month—including Google, which saw a 2.6 percent uptick in the number of searches it executed. The only other loser was Comcast Search, which saw a 21.6 percent month-to-month drop, and now accounts for 0.5 percent of U.S. searches.

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