When you’re trudging up a mountain with not even a glimpse of the summit, and all you know is that you’re really, really far behind the guy in the lead, it might be nice to know that hey, at least you’re in second. Bing can claim that status now in the search engine world, as it has surpassed Yahoo to sit a distant second to Google.
Microsoft has been working hard to get Bing past Yahoo, and according to the Washington Post, those efforts have paid off with 2.75 billion search requests in the U.S. in December. Those numbers finally gave them crowing rights over Yahoo for the first time, and means that some people actually don’t Google things.
Bing’s December hits equal about a 15.1 percent of the U.S. search traffic, says comScore. Yahoo’s 2.65 billion search requests translate to 14.5 percent.
So where is the almighty Google at? They’ve got 12 billion U.S. requests in that same month, or about 65.9 percent of the market share. And the better your comScore number, the more likely companies are going to want to put their ads with your results and the more money you make.
This position switch-up isn’t that surprising to analysts, however, as they’ve seen it coming since Microsoft and Yahoo partnered up in July 2009. Their agreement allows Yahoo to sit back and relax and save money while Microsoft does most of the search technology work.
When Bing gets to be a verb that means “to search the Internet,” that’s when they’ll know they’ve really made it. Until then, mountain climbing!
Search flip flop: Microsoft’s Bing edges past Yahoo into 2nd place behind Google in US market [Washington Post]
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I like to inception my search results. I Google my queries through Bing which is Yahooed.
that’s probably because bing tool bar is installed on new computers…. get rid of that and see where they stand.
I used them once or twice after seeing a few commercials… it didn’t live up to my expectation.
Yeah I really, really don’t like Bing. As you said, much like internet explorer, if it wasn’t the default I doubt anyone would use it. There’s still a huge number of anti-computer-non-tech-savvy people out there who just click on anything to get where they want.
Bingo!
I think so also It snuck by my on a program I recently installed and was removed right then. The mobile versio nof bing really sucks. The wp7 search button used bing and not once did it help me. Can’t even change the thing. I just got rid of it a month ago.
I find it a little bizarre to make note of Bing passing Yahoo since Yahoo is functionally Bing. (As noted above)
I’m sure it matters to some extent which portal they use to access it–due to the ad revenue and whatever little tweaks Yahoo adds to the Bing powered search, and so on.
I guess I view it more like Google has 65.9% and Bing has 29.6%, however inaccurate that might be.
it’s more about branding – more people are turning to (explicitly) Microsoft than to Yahoo!, which is itself a victory for Microsoft.
That’s a good point.
Exactly what I came in here to say. The fact that the article make absolutely no mention of this fact shows why you shouldn’t get your tech news from a consumer complaint website.
I like Bing, and use is as my home page. I like it’s clean look, and I like the pictures.
I have never intentionally used Bing as it is crap. I would say that it gained market share because it is on Androids and all new computers. Do we all remember the IE complaints a decade ago where IE was pre-installed on all computers? Maybe we resurrect that and see what happens.
I particularly liked an article I read a year or so ago that Microsoft was actually complaining that everyone was using Google. They started to default everything to Bing, and people just switched it back to Google if they knew how to!
Frankly, I am absolutely pissed off when I mis-type a bar and a bing search has been conducted on the wrong term! Please just leave it in the address bar so I can fix it!
Bing is better than yahoo. Of course, that’s not really saying much. “cream of the crap” applies here too!
Wow, Microsoft is doing a hell of a lot better then I thought it would ever do. With Yahoo essentially using bing for it’s back end, Microsoft essentially has 29.6 percent of the market. While they are never going to get me to switch, because I like Google’s simple homepage. I’ve got no problem with some good ol’ competition. Also, I would love to see what would happen to Google if all of it’s ad money went away.
I think bribery.. that is, “Bing Rewards”, had a large part to do with that.
They’re not even doing the bribery part right.
I like sites like MyPoints, Swagucks, etc…I figure if I’m going to waste time online, I might as well get something for it…so I’ll click Mypoints links or watch videos for points on Swagbucks instead of playing Bejeweled or something.
Anyway, I just tried to sign up for Bing Rewards. It requires a Windows Live ID which I didn’t have. There’s no direct link to create a Live ID from Bing Rewards. I finally created one using a junk email address – but I can’t log into Rewards until I get a verification email for creating the Live ID. It’s been half an hour now, and I’ve asked them to resend the email 3 or 4 times. Nothing.
Sorry, Bing Rewards. If it’s this hard to join, I can’t imagine I’ll earn rewards fast enough to make it worth my time.
I’ll never give up Lycos, Hotbot, or AltaVista! Never, I say!
*sigh* I still have CompuServe as my provider, but might switch to Prodigy soon.
No, man, it’s all about Ask Jeeves!
Bing gets to be a verb that means “Meh?,
As a Bing user, I don’t really understand those people who say it is crap. I’ve always found everything I’ve needed quite quickly with it.
I agree. I’ve become a 100% Bing user the day Google started their Instant garbage.
You can turn off Instant. It’s easier than suffering with Bing.
There was an episode of “Vampire Diaries” where one of the characters actually said “Let’s Bing it”. It was kind of sad actually. Subtle product placement fail.
Bing was part of the IE toolbar but since I use Firefox it has Google. I do use Yahoo occasionally because I feel bad that so few people do and it’s been around the longest.
Except Bing search powers Yahoo. So it’s all Bing anyway.
It’s easy to get market share when your search engine is the default and they’ve made it harder to find Google than it was previously.
Yeah, I know it’s really hard to find Google. I mean, as an internet user I’ve never thought of typing in the name of the site I wanted to go to in the address bar.
I dont use Bing as a search engine, but calling Bing-411 on my cellphone is the ish.
me, too. But only since Google took their “Google 411″ away.
Yahoo and Bing exist solely to prevent Google from being a technical monopoly. Never gonna use either of them, though.
that’s ok, I don’t use Googlesh*t either. I think google is creepy. I just got a new phone that it’s on and I’m trying to get rid of it.
Yahoo existed for many years before Google.
The only reason people use it is because it sneakily infects your browser with it’s tool bar and takes over as your home page. I’ve had to remove it several times when it’s done this without permission. Plus the word ‘bing’ just reminds me of Chandler from Friends so I can’t ever take it seriously anyway.
I’m proud to be one of the few people keeping Altavista in business.
The key thing to me has always been that both Yahoo and Bing feel they need to advertise.
Google has never had an ad on TV or anywhere as far as I know.
You forgot to mention that Microsoft has dumped a BOATLOAD of cash on a futile attempt to catch Google.
I’d like to see what percent of Bing searches originate in Internet Explorer. I bet it’s more than 95%. You have to go out of your way to change the IE search bar to Google.
The only reason Bing is in second place is because they have been hijacking people’s browsers address box and searchbox preferences. How did firefox’s default search if you type a word in the address box become Bing? I don’t effing know but it’s annoying and I HATE it!
I’ve only used Bing a couple of times. However, with Google becoming more and more useless, I may have to try Bing again.
If you download the latest version of Internet Explorer from the Microsoft website, it now has a box that’s checked by default that makes Bing your default search method.
I guarantee you at least 80% of people don’t notice or uncheck this box; hence Microsoft hits the #2 position by default.
fark both bing and yahoo
Yahoo has a search engine?
I just want to be able to search the internet WITHOUT the gov’mnt following my actions.
Wait, too late.