Searches on Bing-powered engines grew 6.5% in the U.S. from December to January, climbing from 25.77% of total search volume to 27.44%. Google lost 2.5%, dropping from 69.67% to 67.95% of searches. This according to the latest Experian Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report, which looks at U.S. traffic.

Bing.com saw the greatest increase in searches in the month, growing 21% over December, though overall volume was still relatively low at 12.81%. Bing-powered Yahoo actually saw a 4% dip in search volume, to 14.62% between December and January.

Search success rate, or how often a search resulted in a visit to a web site, was highest on Bing-powered sites, the report showed. For both Yahoo and Bing.com, more than 81 percent of searches resulted in a visit to a website. Google only saw a success rate of 65 percent, but this could reflect Google’s highlighting of information on its own site, so searchers don’t find it necessary to click through to a web site.

The report also measured paid search traffic, and found that Amazon again captured the majority of clicks, garnering 11.25% of all paid clicks in January. Amazon had also come out on top in December. Among the top 5 retail sites measured by Experian Hitwise, Lowe’s showed the highest month-over-month growth in paid clicks, at 51%. Sam’s Club, which is among the top 20 retail sites, experienced the highest month-over-month increase, at 62 percent growth.

The Experian Hitwise research also showed 5% growth in longer search queries — those from five to eight words — from December to January. Shorter search queries decreased 1 percent. Two-word searches continued to be the most popular, comprising 23.6% of all search queries.

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: Size

About The Author: Pamela Parker is a contributing editor for Search Engine Land and Executive Features Editor at Marketing Land. She’s a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since 1998, including a stint as managing editor of ClickZ. She’s also worked to help monetize independent publishers’ sites at Federated Media Publishing. She blogs about media and marketing at The River and about cooking, gardening and parenthood at Free Range. She can be found on Twitter as @pamelaparker. See more articles by Pamela Parker

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