Microsoft keeps inching up in US search market share, never gaining by much month to month, but still maintaining a slow and steady pace as it takes share away from the smaller search engines and tries to chip away at Google.
This month, according to numbers released by market analyst comScore, Bing reached a significant milestone in US search market share, gaining 0.3 percentage points to top out at 20.1% share, reaching the 20 percent threshold for the first time ever. In the meantime, both Google and Yahoo lost a tenth of a percentage point, and while Google still maintains a stifling lead on the competition, Bing has done well to continue its upward climb.
Whether or not Google’s recent troubles with the European Union will have any effect on the search giant’s dominance in either the US or Europe remains to be seen, but the effects of Microsoft’s fights with both the EU and US Justice were far reaching. That’s not to say things will turn out the same way for Google, but the EU actions, as well as increased pressure from Microsoft, some failed initiatives into social media, a stronger Yahoo now armed to take on a mobile search fight, and a changing monetization landscape that is bringing in far less revenue for Google via mobile search than it’s making via the desktop all could contribute to what might be a very different search landscape in the coming years.
Still, not to get to far ahead of the game, Microsoft did only increase its search share by 3 tenths of a percentage point in the last month, which in itself isn’t all that significant. But, as Venture Beat points out, Microsoft can now claim 1 in 5 US searches, and if you include Yahoo results, even more, 1 in 3.
