comScore: Google, Bing gain search share as Yahoo dips
comScore's latest findings show that Google has yet to reach its saturation point of users, as it inched up by 0.2 percent from January to February. Microsoft's Bing also climbed slightly by 0.1 percent.
But the two rival search engines are still a world apart from each other as Google reigns with over 66 percent of the market share, while Bing is scraping in at second place with just over 15 percent.
Yahoo lost the most ground out of the leading search engines, dropping 0.3 percent to a percentage point lower than in January. AOL lost out too, as Ask.com remained low but steady in the rankings.
While Yahoo and Bing remain separate search sites, the underbelly of the engine itself remains the same, powered by Bing, in the same way Google powers AOL and Ask's search pages.
Bing's share of "powered by" searches dipped from 26.5 percent in January to 26.2 percent in February, while Google's share of "powered by" searches gained from 68.4 in January to 68.6 percent in February.
Looking at the numbers, Google raked in 11.7 billion core searches in February, with Bing raking in 2.7 billion and Yahoo at 2.4 billion. These core search figures are calculated from what users enter in on the search pages.
It will be interesting to see whether Google's latest privacy policy move affects its search engine standings. Next month should be the one to watch, as it will show whether users have shied away from the company in wake of its consolidating of its privacy rules across its online services.
The move has been heavily criticised by European regulators, with some data protection regulators around the region claiming that the new privacy policy is "unlawful".
Image credit: comScore/CNET.
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