Bing overtakes Yahoo as No 2 search engine

On 4 June this week, Microsoft's Internet search engine Bing, launched on 29 May, overtook Yahoo as the number two search engine in the US and worldwide, according to a report by StatCounter Global Stats.

StatCounter, which provides free website traffic analysis, said that Bing grabbed market share from Google to overtake Yahoo, AOL and Ask.com.

"It remains to be seen if Bing falls away after the initial novelty and promotion, but at first sight it looks like Microsoft is on to a winner," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, of StatCounter."

Ahead of  the launh of Bing, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said that he wanted Microsoft to become the second biggest search engine within five years, a record the new search engine has achieved within a week of its launch, at least for now. (See: Microsoft to unveil new search engine next week) 

Following the breakdown of  talks to acquire Yahoo at a $40 billion, (See: Yahoo had spurned Microsoft's $40 bid: unsealed court papers) to take on Google's dominance in the online ad market, the software giant may have just acquired the No2 position with Bing much sooner and a lot cheaper.

According to StatCounter for 3 May, in the US Bing leapfrogged Yahoo to take second place on 16.28 per cent. Yahoo has 10.22 per cent while market leader Google still commands the US search engine market with 71.47 per cent.

StatCounter data globally finds that Bing at 5.62 per cent has taken a narrow lead over Yahoo's 5.13 per cent. Google worldwide retains 87.62 per cent of the market.
The Redmond-based giant has been conducting beta testing of Bing for over a few months prior to its launch on 30 May 2009.

The search engine, which was supported by a $100 million advertisement and marketing campaign, vastly improves on the organization of search results making it much easier for users to find what they are looking for quickly.

Microsoft has found a way to present search results in Bing in category chunks; by way of example if one were searching for a certain type of motorbike, the engine would present results with online discussion forums, videos, classifieds, spare parts retailers etc for that particular model.

A Google user may find not as many results to a query with Bing, unless the query is on a well-known topic. However, what has impressed most Bing users is the fact that the search engine's search results include a preview text box summarising its content when you float the cursor to the right side, where a vertical line and orange circle of each result is located.

Another advantage that Bing brings is with its advanced-search option, which is more accessible than Google's and by selecting them, Bing is still able to keep you in your current search results page.

Meanwhile, according to reports, Yahoo is also planning to make a comeback with an improved version of its search engine. The flailing internet portal is giving its search engine a facelift to allow users to better home in on specific data related to their searches by pulling up addresses, images, videos and reviews instead of just a jumble listing of links.

Last July, Microsoft bought San Francisco-based developer of semantic search technology Powerset in an estimated $100-million deal. The technology allows the search engine to determine the intent behind each search term and provide more accurate search results.

StatCounter, which provides free website traffic analysis, is one of the largest web analytics companies in the world monitoring in excess of ten billion pageloads per month.

In March, it launched StatCounter Global Stats, a free online service which captures market share battles of search engines, browsers and operating systems including mobile.

The StatCounter Global Stats research data, is based on four billion pageloads per month.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats