According to Nielsen, comScore and Experian Hitwise, while Google remains far ahead of the rest of the pack, Bing continues its ascent into Yahoo!’s territory.
Google led the U.S. search market with 65.2 percent of all searches in February, according to Nielsen. This was a slight decline from its 66.3 percent share in January.
Yahoo! finished the month with 14.1 percent of all U.S. searches, down from 14.5 percent in the prior month.
Microsoft/Windows Live/Bing finished February with 12.5 percent of the U.S. search market, up from 10.9 percent in January.
AOL (2.3 percent) and Ask.com (1.9 percent) maintained their positions.
According to comScore, Google claimed 65.5 percent of the market in February, up from 65.4 percent in January. Meanwhile, Yahoo! finished with 16.8 percent, down from 17.0 percent in the previous month.
Microsoft claimed 11.5 percent, up from 11.3 percent in January. Ask.com (3.7 percent) and AOL (2.5 percent) rounded out the top five, according to comScore.
The company also noted that Facebook saw a 10 percent boost in the number of search queries it saw in February, finishing the month with 436 million.
Experian Hitwise pegged Google at 70.95 percent in February, down from 71.49 percent in January. Yahoo! remained unchanged at 14.57 percent.
Bing took 9.70 percent of the U.S. search market in February, up from 9.37 percent in the previous month. Ask.com finished with 2.84 percent of the market, up from 2.64 percent in January.
While Google is set on shutting down its Google.cn search engine in China, it wants to maintain its other China-based services, including its maps and mobile phones.
Bing, which is already surging in the U.S., seems to inherit many of the users who would be left behind by a Google.cn departure.
“Bing” in Chinese means sick, cold or pancake, which has led to Microsoft changing its Chinese-flavored search engine to “bi ying,” which means must respond.
Sources:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/nielsen-reports-february-2010-u-s-search-rankings/
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/3/comScore_Releases_February_2010_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings
http://www.hitwise.com/us/press-center/press-releases/google-searches-feb-10/
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14681202
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704588404575124062948976720.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines
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