Bing is up. Yahoo is down. Google still dominates. That’s the latest story line from comScore. The market-research firm just issued its October U.S. search-engine rankings.
Not surprisingly, Google’s share of the search-engine market continues to grow. Google earned 65.4 percent of the market in October, compared to 64.9 percent in September, according to comScore.
Microsoft is gaining momentum, thanks to its new Bing decision engine. Microsoft’s total share of the U.S. search market rose to 9.9 percent in October. That’s half a percentage point higher than comScore’s September rankings.
Yahoo was the big loser in October. Despite Yahoo’s continued investments into innovative features, the once-dominant search engine slipped to 18 percent market share compared to 18.8 percent in September.
Yahoo’s Cause for Concern
Microsoft seems to be gaining momentum at Yahoo’s expense. Microsoft has steadily watched its search-engine ratings rise since it launched Bing in June. Microsoft hedged its search-engine bets by inking a search-partnership deal with Yahoo in July to target Google. Still, the two search companies combined have less than half the market share Google boasts.
Yahoo may have cause for concern. At 18 percent, the company is sinking to new lows. In September, Yahoo launched a global brand campaign to realign its business around simplifying and enhancing the web experience for people around the world.
As part of that rebranding effort, Yahoo launched a new Yahoo “search experience” that works to make search more personally relevant. The new design features intelligent search results that aim to make it easier to see results from more sites, along with a search-assist expansion tool on the left-hand column of the page that lets users explore concepts related to the search query. But the new design wasn’t enough to stem the tide of Yahoo’s losses.
Bing’s Big Month
Meanwhile, Microsoft has been building Bing’s features. In June,…