Bing search share starts sliding

Stephen Withers
Friday, 02 October 2009 03:32

Your IT - Home IT

New reports show Bing's share of the search market has declined on a month-by-month basis. Both StatCounter and Net Applications show Bing's share dropped in September.

It's often said that you can't set too much store in the exact numbers reported by web analytics companies, but that the trends they reveal are more meaningful.

If that's true, Microsoft has cause for concern. According to StatCounter's  September 2009 report, Bing lost market share for the first time.

Bing's US share slipped from 9.64% in August to 8.51% in September. Globally, it went from 3.58% to 3.25%.

"The trend has been downwards for Bing since mid August," said Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter's CEO. He had previously noted that Bing's share peaked in the week 10th - 16th August.

"The wheels haven't fallen off but the underlying trend must be a little worrying for Microsoft," added Cullen.

Combining the shares achieved by Bing and Yahoo! makes things look even gloomier. (A strategic partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo! will see Bing take over as the search engine on Yahoo!'s sites.)

The US search share achieved by the two companies plunged from 20.14% in August to 17.91% in September.

Things don't look any better from a global perspective, with the combined share slumping from 8.42% to 7.62%.

If Bing's and Yahoo!'s shares fell, someone's must have risen. No big surprise here - all of the US share lost by the partners-to-be transferred straight to Google, which took 80.08% in September.

How is Google travelling internationally, and what do Net Applications' September figures show? Find out on page 2.