February search results show that Bing continues to grow as Yahoo sags.
Comscore reported that usage of Bing went up from 11.3% in January to 11.5% in February, while Yahoo’s stats during the same period dropped to 16.8% from 17%. Google’s stats remained essentially unchanged.
The most impressive figures for Bing, however, come from a report written by Morgan Stanley analyst Imran Khan. Khan stated that Microsoft’s year on year search growth for the month of February was 55.4%, up from January’s similarly impressive 49% year on year search growth. In the same period, Yahoo’s seen year on year search volume shrink 9.8% in February and 8.9% in January.
So what does this mean for the search market? It means that Bing has continued to grow, and more importantly, that Bing’s growth appears to be accelerating.
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This appears to be due to a combination of factors. First, Bing is apparently luring considerable numbers of users away from Yahoo. This suggests that Bing’s extensive marketing efforts have succeeded to some extent.
Second, Google’s growth appears to be slowing down a little bit. Year on Year total searches for January and February increased by 12.4% and 10.4% respectively. Google’s Year on Year search growth for these months barely outpaced total search growth, coming in at 16.7% and 14.3% respectively.
It appears that the search market is consolidating somewhat. Bing’s market share is inching upwards, at the expense of everyone else except Google. When Yahoo essentially concedes their search engine to Bing, it will be interesting to see if Bing is able to take a bite out of Google
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