February Search Results Are In: Bing Is Up Again, Yahoo Is Down Again (MSFT, YHOO)
Another month, another weak search performance from Yahoo. — The latest data from comScore on the US search market came out today. — It shows Bing had 11.5% of the search market in February, up from 11.3% in January.
Context & Ripple Effects
The monthly comScore ritual has flipped since late 2008, when Yahoo actually gained share while Microsoft lost it — a reversal captured in that earlier Yahoo-gains/Microsoft-loses report. Since then Bing has climbed steadily at Yahoo's expense, reaching 11.5% of US searches in February from 11.3% in January.
What makes this reading different is timing: regulators on both sides of the Atlantic cleared the Yahoo–Microsoft search agreement just weeks earlier, in February 2010, so every tenth-of-a-point Yahoo sheds now lands on a company about to become its own search backend. Yahoo, meanwhile, has been talking up product rather than query volume — Facebook Connect integration across its sites and real-time search efforts previewed at SMX West.
First-order effects
- Bing extends its unbroken share climb to 11.5%, giving Microsoft momentum it can take into the Yahoo partnership whose DOJ and European Commission clearance arrived on February 18.
- Yahoo posts another consecutive decline, deepening the pressure on a company whose search traffic is contractually headed to Microsoft once the deal transitions.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers and publishers now price against an approaching combined Bing-Yahoo entity: the moment Yahoo's queries run on Bing's ad platform, Microsoft's effective reach jumps well past what 11.5% alone implies, forcing agencies to re-plan spend around Google plus one consolidated challenger.
- comScore's methodology becomes more consequential than ever — with Yahoo and Microsoft both incentivized to show the combined operation gaining ground, the third-party measurement firm effectively arbitrates whether the deal looks like a success.
Third-order effects
- If Bing keeps converting Yahoo's losses, the US market structurally consolidates toward a two-and-a-half player field — Google dominant, Microsoft ascendant, Yahoo shrinking into a distribution layer for Microsoft's index — which sharpens antitrust scrutiny of Google by giving regulators a credible #2 to point to.
- Monthly share reports harden into the industry scoreboard through which the Yahoo–Microsoft deal will be judged, raising the stakes on measurement disputes between comScore, the engines, and their rivals.
The trend: US search is consolidating around Microsoft's Bing, whose steady monthly gains are eroding Yahoo even as the two companies merge their search operations under a newly regulator-cleared agreement.