A recent report from Nielsen indicates that Microsoft’s search engine Bing has overtaken Yahoo! in terms of popularity in the U.S. market.
In effect this means that Bing now occupies the number 2 slot, which had so far been held by Yahoo! In the search engine market.
The Nielsen report shows that in the month of August 2010, Bing held 13.9% of the market share, which is ahead of Yahoo! which had only 13.1% of the market share.
In the month of July however, Yahoo! had still been ahead of Bing with 14.3% of the market share.
Over the last year, Yahoo! has lost a considerable part of its market share, which was 16% last August, but is only 13.1% this August.
Bing on the other hand has been growing steadily from 10.7% last August to 13.9% this August.
The Microsoft Yahoo! search deal which was announced in July last year, has now become operational in the U.S. and Canada, due to which Yahoo! searches are powered by Bing. This could have further contributed to the loss of market share which Yahoo! has suffered.
In fact the combined market share of Bing and Bing powered Yahoo! search results now stands at 26%.
While the Nielsen report is based only on search queries generated by users, the comScore reports include contextual search also. The comScore figures thus vary considerably from Nielsen, and these figures indicate that Yahoo! still held the number two slot in the month of July with a considerable margin.
Needless to say, Google continues to hold the number 1 slot with about 65% of the market share.
