Google search share dips; Bing and Yahoo catching up
The latest search marketshare data from comScore shows that Google, whilst still high and mighty on its search pedestal, is losing points while its competitors, notably Bing and Yahoo, are gaining.
Overall, the big picture hasn't changed, but it will be something that Microsoft can revel in during the BUILD conference this week: Google's search marketshare is nearly 65 percent while Yahoo and Bing are collectively in the low-30 percent range.
Breaking down the numbers further:
Google had 64.8 percent last month, down from 65.1 percent in July -- dropping by a third of a percent. But as Google dipped ever so slightly, Yahoo and Bing picked up its losses. Yahoo's share grew by 0.2 percent to 16.3 percent from the month before, and Bing rose too by 0.3 percent to 14.7 percent.
While Google drops slightly, the other two in-duo are raising their user base. Considering the Microsoft-Yahoo deal last year, whereby Microsoft handles search queries for Yahoo's pages, the combined effort alone is showing its mark on the search statistics front.
It's unlikely that the share figures will change as a result of Carol Bartz's resignation as chief executive and board member of Yahoo -- but a company without a leader or firm direction could result in long-term strategy problems for the company.
But as Microsoft saddles up to Facebook, for which the Redmond-based company has shares in, more and more are turning to Facebook as their de-facto search engine.
Google is still far ahead of the pack, however. The company continues to grow and search features are being added all over the place. Yet, with Instant Pages -- a feature rolled out by Google in June, which pre-loads the first result of each search -- this shows just how the search giant is bringing its core values back to search.
But as Microsoft is still behind Yahoo by nearly two percentage points, one has to wonder whether all the investment and deals with Bing is even worth it.
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