October Search Market Share: Bing Continues To Grow At Yahoo’s Expense

Preliminary October search market share data from comScore are being exposed by financial analysts. We’ll have to wait for the official numbers either later today or tomorrow. However, it appears there is little change from last month: Google is flat, Bing gained a fraction of a point and Yahoo lost two-tenths of a percent.

More broadly, however, the numbers reflect a long-term trend toward Bing and away from Yahoo. Google remains largely untouched. Below are the October figures we’ve seen:

• Google — October: 66.9 percent; September: 66.9 percent; August: 66.9 percent
• Bing — October 18.1 percent; September: 18 percent; August: 17.8 percent
• Yahoo — October 11.1 percent; September: 11.3 percent; August: 11.4 percent

We didn’t see any numbers reported for Ask and AOL. Between the two they divide 3.9 percent of the US market for October. Here are last month’s figures for the two:

• Ask — September:  2.5 percent; August: 2.6 percent
• AOL — September:  1.3 percent; August: 1.3 percent

Mobile market share and traffic are not reflected in the above figures.

According to StatCounter mobile now drives nearly 20 percent of global internet traffic on average. The aggregate number in the US is roughly 15 percent. But in certain categories the percentage of traffic coming from mobile devices is north of 35 or 40 percent (even higher in some local contexts).

In terms of US mobile search share StatCounter offers the following breakdown:

• Google — 88.1 percent
• Yahoo — 8.1 percent
• Bing — 3.4 percent
• All others — 0.4 percent

Last week we discussed the rumor that Microsoft CEO candidate Stephen Elop would be open to selling Bing. That would certainly shake up the market if the rumor were true and Elop became the CEO. But right now it’s nothing more than pure speculation.

Postscript: comScore has posted the official October numbers.