Microsoft Bing and Yahoo's search engines combined for nearly 25 percent of U.S.
search queries through their first full week of integration, according to
market researcher HitWise.
Google logged 71.6 percent of all U.S.
searches in the four weeks of August, up from 71.4 percent through July.
Yahoo and Bing grabbed 14.3 percent and 9.9 percent of searches in the country,
respectively. However, the key point of interest is how Bing and Yahoo-powered
search fared when combined.
Bing and Yahoo completed Yahoo's transfer of its back-end search to Bing
Aug. 4, which means Bing began powering all of Yahoo's U.S.
search queries. Users now see a "Powered by Bing" tag for searches on
Yahoo.
The transfer is a significant landmark in the companies' 10-year deal to let Bing drive Yahoo search in the hope of
capturing more market share versus Google.
HitWise, which takes its data by counting the monthly upstream traffic from
10 million U.S. Internet users, displayed its charts here and noted:
"The percentage of U.S.
searches for the one week ending Aug. 28, 2010, for the Bing combined powered search
accounted for 24.56 percent, as Yahoo Search and Bing received 14.32 percent
and 10.24 percent, respectively."
That number should mollify Microsoft somewhat, though the company will need
to continue to advance that combined growth to make a dent versus Google, which
has yet to cede significant ground in the search market.
Google, meanwhile, is expected to raise the bar it set, if not fortify it,
by announcing streaming search, which surfaces results instantly as users type, at a search event
today.
The search engine alluded to this technology with a bouncing ball Google Doodle
Sept. 7.
Indexing & Search Engine News & Reviews 
