Bing And Google Gain Market Share While Yahoo Drops

The comScore February search market share numbers are being exposed by the various financial and investment firms this evening. Bing continued to gain, while its partner Yahoo lost market share. Google was up compared to January and year over year. Keeping in mind this isn’t yet the official comScore release, the following are the numbers […]

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The comScore February search market share numbers are being exposed by the various financial and investment firms this evening. Bing continued to gain, while its partner Yahoo lost market share. Google was up compared to January and year over year.

Keeping in mind this isn’t yet the official comScore release, the following are the numbers for February:

  • Google: 66.4 percent (vs. 65.4 percent a year ago)
  • Bing:  15.3 percent (vs. 13.6 percent a year ago)
  • Yahoo: 13.8 percent (vs. 16.1 percent a year ago)
  • Ask: 3 percent (vs. 3.2 percent a year ago)
  • AOL: 1.5 percent (vs. 1.7 percent a year ago)

The combined search alliance share is now 29.1 percent, essentially flat and where it has been for many months. However Yahoo’s decline since last year at this time has been significant.

For comparison, here are the official comScore numbers from January, 2012:

Screen Shot 2012 03 08 At 6.14.25 PM

The data above do not reflect mobile search market share, which accounts for between 15 percent and 30 percent of query volume in some categories. There, Google is almost totally dominant.

US mobile search market share

Screen Shot 2012 03 08 At 6.25.59 PM

Source: StatCounter

Postscript: This afternoon comScore published the official search market share figures for February. They’re consistent with what we presented above:

Screen Shot 2012 03 09 At 5.04.17 PM


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About the author

Greg Sterling
Contributor
Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

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