Nielsen: Bing Passes Yahoo To Become #2 Search Engine
According to Nielsen data out this morning Microsoft's Bing has passed Yahoo to become the number two search engine in the US. Nielsen says that Google's August share is 65% (and growth is flat) but that Bing and Yahoo have now switched places:
Context & Ripple Effects
Nielsen's August panel puts Bing above Yahoo in US search for the first time, with Google flat at 65% — meaning Microsoft's gain came entirely out of Yahoo's base. That lands a year after comScore measured 46 percent global search market growth in 2009, a rising tide that has so far lifted nobody but Google.
Pickup beyond SEL is thin — BetaNews carried the same numbers under a pointedly skeptical headline ('Bing overtakes Yahoo, and that's not a good thing'), framing the switch as a symptom of Yahoo's erosion rather than proof of Bing's momentum. With discussion quiet so far, the number-two crown is contested territory: whether it sticks depends heavily on which measurement firm advertisers believe.
First-order effects
- Yahoo slips to third place in Nielsen's US rankings — a symbolic blow for a brand whose search business is already under pressure — while Microsoft gains the 'number two' credential it can put in front of advertisers.
- Because Google's 65% share shows flat growth, every point Bing picked up in August came directly from Yahoo's query volume rather than new search demand entering the market.
Second-order effects
- Ad buyers who allocate budget by rank now face Microsoft as the default non-Google destination, concentrating search spend further into two scale players and squeezing Yahoo's ability to defend pricing on a shrinking query base.
- Divergent panels become commercially decisive: Nielsen's call contradicts comScore's picture of the same market, so whichever measurement advertisers accept effectively decides when Yahoo concedes the position.
Third-order effects
- If the swap holds, US search hardens into a de facto Google-versus-Microsoft contest in which Microsoft inherits the whole non-Google demand pool — a structural narrowing that competitors, publishers, and antitrust watchers would have to respond to.
The trend: US search is consolidating into a two-player race, with Yahoo's share migrating to Bing rather than fragmenting across smaller engines.