Internet usage tracking firm StatCounter has released new figures for the search engine market for July 2009, and finds that Microsoft’s Bing search offering has gained another one percent of the search market during the month, brining its total to 9.41 percent of the U.S. search market. That’s up from 8.23 percent in June, but—perhaps more importantly—Bing seems to have taken most of that one percent from Google, which StatCounter says saw its share decline from 78.48 percent to 77.54 percent of the U.S. search market.
It says something about the attention being paid to the search marketplace that a one percent fluctuation in a search engine’s share is significant. However, competition in the search marketplace is being taken to a whole new level with Microsoft and Yahoo announcing a 10-year partnership that sees Bing taking over search duties on Yahoo, and Yahoo handling advertising. Combined with Yahoo’s share, the two companies now account for 20.36 percent of the U.S. search market.
“Bing continues to make slow but steady progress but the combined Yahoo figures suggest that the deal announced last week will have to demonstrate major future synergies if it is to make any dent in Google’s dominance,” said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen, in a statement.
Internationally, StatCounter places Google in an utterly commanding position on search, accounting for 89.8 percent of searches.
