Report: Yahoo-Bing traffic growth surpassed Google in Q3

Bing network traffic growth surpassed Google during the third quarter, according to a new report from global online marketing firm The Search Agency.

Self-touted as "the largest independent search agency" in the United States, The Search Agency cited that the Yahoo-Bing network grew by 9.6 percent last quarter.

Keith Wilson, vice president of Agency Products at The Search Agency, added in prepared remarks that "higher quality traffic on Yahoo!-Bing" is "driving advertisers to invest more in the growing search engine."

Google only grew by 0.7 percent -- although that isn't really worrisome as The Search Agency asserted that the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is still "the dominant search engine."

Across all search engines, researchers found that click traffic increased by 27 percent, year-over-year. U.S. impressions increased by 21 percent.

Another important finding explained in the Q3 State of Paid Search Report reflects a much larger trend at play in technology: the major shift towards mobile.

Specifically, researchers posited that consumer goods and services companies as well as the entertainment industry are flocking to mobile away from traditional computer environments.

Here are some of the mobile highlights in the third quarter report:

• Smartphone click traffic increased by 105 percent on an annual basis with a 13 percent increase in cost per clicks.
• Tablet traffic spiked with click traffic increasing by 339 percent year-over-year.

The Search Agency's emphasis on the growth of mobile follows up a recent report from Opera Software, which found that Apple's iOS platform largely dominates the mobile advertising space.

Yet the bigger (and still developing) story is really how the proliferation of mobile is going to change the way advertisers and the companies they represent react to these overwhelming shifts.