The latest US search engine market share statistics compiled by Nielsen have been released and they confirm a trend that we have predicted for some time now.
Microsoft’s Bing search engine managed to grow from 9% to 13.6 in the last twelve months, while Yahoo fell sharply from 17.1% to 14.3 and Google Search moderately from 65.2% to 64.2%.
In total percentages, Bing managed to gain 51% in the last twelve months while both Google and Yahoo dropped.
All three search engines combined account for a total of 92.1% of all searches in the US.
us search engine market share
The number of searches confirms that trend even more. The number of searches conducted dropped from 10.5 billion in July 2009 to 8.8 billion one year later. Bing managed to increase the search volume by 28% while both Google Search (17%) and Yahoo Search (30%) lost search volume.
us search volume
Several factors play a role here. First, Microsoft did launch Bing 14 months ago and it is likely that the search engine picked up momentum in the first months after start. And then there is the huge marketing campaign for Bing.
But can it all be attributed to that, or are there other factors that play a role? Yahoo without doubt will continue to decline in the coming months, especially since their US search traffic has been effectively handed over to Bing.
Google has experimented a lot in the last twelve months, and not always for the better. The search engine has added elements to the search results pages, especially the new sidebar, more ads and more links to other services, the majority of which are owned by Google as well.
The search quality seems to have deteriorated in that time, and while not everyone sees it yet, it seems as if it will continue to deteriorate in the next twelve months.
Have you tried out Bing yet? Why do you think that Bing gained market share while Google did not?
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How come total number of searches decreased by 16% YoY? Is it normal?
Google search quality decreased because Internet Marketers/Spammers managed to game their system.
Well good question, maybe the Yahoo – Microsoft talks have had an impact on that. Maybe it is just that Google and Yahoo have both lost to Bing.
I just can’t understand who in the world is interested in statistics about some non-important country with only 300 million people , out of 7 Billion, named USA, where 70% of it’s high-school graduates are illiterate (Beethoven is a Hollywood movie dog, not a composer)
Non interesting, but Bing has only 3% share in the world.
Agree with ilev – Bing may be strong in the US, but unless it can reach non-US customers. Personally, I pretty much hate the whole US-centrism of services, including Zune Marketplace and others.
Anyway, the international usability is something that Google excels at and that’s why any other search engine has a long way (or a good idea) to go to catch up with them.
Yeah, I too think that both Bing and Yahoo are very US centric and that’s why they’re hardly going to catch up with Google unless they do something real special. However, even Canada feels underserved by Google when it comes to news search and similar.
WAKE UP, search engines, there’s a lot of money outside the US too!
Yahoo is definitely losing more and more search these days. Can’t keep up with Google as they are dominant.