StatCounter places Bing as search's second banana for first time

Mar 09, 2011

The results are in for the latest round of StatCounter's analysis of the search engine market, and the firm has declared Bing as claiming the silver medal of search, still a long way off from gold-grabbers Google but squeaking past battered bronze recipients Yahoo!

It's not all bad news for Yahoo!, however, as it just last year outsourced its search capabilities to Microsoft's search offering, meaning an overall increasing demand for Redmond's alternative algorithms.

Bing's runner-up status still leaves it a distant second to Google however, claiming a 4.37 per cent slice of the worldwide search pie, ahead of Yahoo!'s flagging 3.93 percent but falling well short of the search stranglehold exhibited by Google's 89.94 per cent.

"It is significant that Bing overtook Yahoo! globally for the first time on a monthly basis but it remains a tough battle to claw back Google's market share," StatCounter chief executive Aodhan Cullen said. "Although Google dipped below the 90 per cent mark in February worldwide for the first time since August 2009 it shows little sign of losing its global dominance any time soon."

Yahoo!'s fortunes are much better in research culled from the crucial US market, however, where the exclamation-marked one draws nearly one in ten searchers, or 9.74 per cent, against Bing's 9.03 per cent. Google, by comparison, has less of an edge on its competitors as well, though still boasting a 79.63 bulwark.

However, Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb noted that research presented by rival analytics firms has clashed with StatCounter results in the past, meaning Redmond may not be popping the bubbly quite yet.


Source:  bigmouthmedia.com