Search Engine Market Share Statistics – February 2011

by James Perrin on 15th February 2011

Microsoft’s Bing was the biggest winner this month as they continued their slow rise in search engine market share in the UK and US. Figures from Hitwise indicate that whilst Google still have the lion’s share of the UK search engine market, its Bing who is gaining the most ground on Google, even if it’s a small fraction.

Google’s percentage of the market share dropped from 90.68% to 90.39%, a 0.29% drop, which was largely taken by Bing, whose market share rose from 3.87% to 4.12%, a 0.25% month on month rise to February 12th 2010. Yahoo and Ask also saw minor gains this month, whilst all other search engines dropped in market share.

In the US market, the story is very similar, but even more pronounced. ComScore revealed that Microsoft have seen their market share rise from 12% in December to 13.1% in January, that’s a month on month market share rise of 1.1%.  At the same time Google saw theirs drop from 66.6% to 65.6%, a reduction of 1%.

Yahoo saw a gain of 0.10% up to 16.10% making it still the second largest search engine in the US. Ask and AOL both saw reductions in their market share, down 0.10% and 0.20% respectively.

What is significant is that Microsoft’s Bing has made its biggest month on month improvement so far. Whilst Google are in no immediate threat of being overtaken, these figures do make interesting reading. Whether this is in response to concerted marketing from Microsoft, a result of the spat between the two engines or simply a temporary fluctuation remains to be seen.

We reported earlier in the month on Bing’s search volume and market share rise [see: Rise in Search Volume and Market Share for Bing] and these monthly updated figures go a long way to support their relative ascendency. Bing is still a way off yet, but they’re definitely heading in the right direction.