Did Bing Leapfrog Yahoo? Not Exactly

We saw the same headline, based on data issued by StatCounter from Thursday. These data reportedly show that yesterday the share of searches went like this:

• Google: 71.47 percent
• Bing: 16.28 percent
• Yahoo: 10.22 percent

On a global basis the company said it saw a similar trend:

• Google: 87.62 percent
• Bing: 5.62 percent
• Yahoo: 5.13 percent

To get a reality check on these numbers and discover whether Bing had in fact surpassed Yahoo we reached out to Hitwise, Nielsen, comScore and Compete. We’re still waiting to get data or updates from these sources. But the charts and tables below reflect what we got quickly from Hitwise and Nielsen. I also include some public Compete data at the end.

Hitwise shows Yahoo still more than double Bing’s volume, but says that Bing’s visits “are up more than 14,500% since launch.”

Nielsen shows a jump in Bing visits on June 1 but a decline thereafter. But look how the volume doubled in terms of audience (vs. Live Search) and how page views essentially tripled.

The blue numbers are based on small samples and are less reliable.

Now here are the Compete public data comparing Google, Yahoo search (not Yahoo.com) and Bing (where the sample is too small to be helpful).

What these data collectively show — and we’ll update if/when we get more — is that Bing has received a potentially significant traffic bump compared to Live Search/MSN since launch and rollout of the marketing campaign on TV and online. However Bing has (so far) not surpassed Yahoo for the number two spot.

Update: Below is a more complete chart from Hitwise showing daily visits, with Live and MSN broken out. The chart appears to reflect that Bing has taken over for MSN and Live Search but that it has not gained any significant share according to Hitwise: