If the search market were a horse race, Bing would be moving up as the venerable Yahoo horse starts dropping behind — and Google would be far ahead. A new report from comScore, which monitors Web traffic, found Yahoo’s portion of U.S.-based searches fell 0.5 percent in November alone, while Microsoft’s Bing rose 0.4 percent and Google remained nearly steady.
That puts Bing at about 10.3 percent market share, Yahoo still in second place at 17.5 percent, and Google soaring at 65.6 percent with a 0.2 percent increase over October. The fourth and fifth search engines are Ask and AOL, way behind at 3.9 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively.
Like Secretariat
The competition, said Information Technology Intelligence Corp.’s Laura DiDio, is like “everyone being way behind Secretariat in the 1973 Belmont Stakes,” where the legendary racehorse “looked like he was racing against himself.”
In the race for second place, DiDio added, the “momentum goes to Bing.” She noted that Microsoft’s entry into search has gained two percent since May, Yahoo’s has dropped from 20.5 percent, and Google appears to be stabilizing in its way-out-front position.
Measured as query volume, Bing had the largest growth of the top search engines in November, with a six percent increase in volume. Yahoo’s dropped two percent, and Google’s edged up one percent.
comScore’s stats include partner and cross-channel searches, but not searches for mapping, local directory, or user-generated video sites. The actual number of searches was about 9.5 billion for Google, 2.5 billion for Yahoo, 1.5 billion for Bing, 548 million for Ask, and 401 million for AOL.
DiDio attributed Bing’s steady growth to marketing, adding that the feature distinctions between the search engines are relatively minor. But the race is not close to being over, she said. “Looking at the search market in perspective,” she said, “there is still…