Microsoft Bing picked up search share in November, grabbing 11.8 percent share at the expense of Google and Yahoo. Google still wields 66 percent of the market.
Google and Yahoo each lost a smidgen of search engine
market share to Microsoft Bing, which rose to 11.8 percent share through
November, according to researcher comScore.
Google
maintained its 66 percent search engine market share through November, slipping
from 66.3 percent to 66.2 percent during the holiday shopping month.
Yahoo, whose search is now powered by Bing in the United States,
fell from 16.5 percent to 16.4 percent. Bing, at 11.5 percent in October,
clearly enjoyed small query share gains at its rivals' expense.
These numbers counted explicit core search, where users
hit enter on a result or clicks on an organic or paid result, a refinement link
or on a vertical search tab.
comScore's numbers suggest
Google Instant, which lets
users see results as they type their query, did not work its same magic in
November.
Google launched the predictive search technology in
September and comScore found the company's search share
grew from 66.1 percent to 66.3 percent through October, the first full month of
the new search feature.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a Dec. 15 research
note that while Google saw an acceleration in query growth in September and
October -- queries were up 18 percent year-to-year -- Google saw a deceleration
of query growth of 12 percent year-to-year for November.
"Given the data, it appeared Google Instant was
having a meaningful impact on y/y query growth; however, November data suggests Google Instant may not have as great of an
impact longer term," Munster wrote.
Americans
tallied more than 16 billion searches for November, which is dominated by Black
Friday and Cyber Monday holiday sales.
Google commanded 10.6 billion of those
searches, followed by Yahoo with 2.6 billion and Microsoft with 1.9 billion.
Email
Print
