Bing, Yahoo Now Neck & Neck In US Search Market Share
Bing's slow growth in US search market share continues, and Microsoft's two-and-a-half-year-old search engine is now practically neck-and-neck with Yahoo. Both, however, remain far behind Google. — The latest comScore numbers …
Context & Ripple Effects
The #2 slot in US search has been contested territory for over a year: Nielsen had Bing passing Yahoo back in September 2010 (Nielsen called Bing the #2 engine), and StatCounter had it ahead worldwide by March 2011 — yet comScore's December numbers still show the two practically tied, a reminder that the ranking depends heavily on whose panel is counting.
The deeper story is structural: with Bing powering Yahoo's organic results under their search deal, Microsoft already supplies both engines — Bing-backed results accounted for roughly 30% of US searches as of April 2011. The neck-and-neck headline measures how much of that combined volume still carries the Yahoo brand versus Microsoft's own.
First-order effects
- Advertisers and SEO teams planning around 'the #2 engine' face a muddier picture than ever, since comScore, Nielsen, and StatCounter disagree on who holds the slot even as all agree both trail Google by a wide margin.
Second-order effects
- Every point of share Yahoo cedes to Bing shrinks the value of Yahoo's own brand in search and deepens its dependence on Microsoft's infrastructure — the supplier is winning against its own distribution partner.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US search settles into a de facto two-player structure — Google on one side, Microsoft supplying both challengers on the other — with Yahoo's long-term role reduced to a distribution agreement rather than an independent engine.
The trend: US search is consolidating into a Google-versus-Microsoft contest in which Microsoft increasingly owns the entire non-Google stack, brand distinctions between Bing and Yahoo notwithstanding.