Bing overtakes Yahoo! for the first time

1 Mar 2011

The Bing search engine overtook Yahoo! for the first time worldwide in January and increased its lead in February, according to StatCounter.

StatCounter Global Stats found that globally, Bing reached 4.37pc in February ahead of Yahoo! at 3.93pc. Both trail far behind Google’s 89.94pc of the global search engine market.

In the US, Yahoo! at 9.74pc still retains its lead over Bing at 9.03pc. Google’s share in the US is 79.63pc.

In July 2009, Microsoft announced an agreement whereby Bing would power the Yahoo! search technology. This has been implemented in the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Mexico.

Google remains an elusive target

“It is significant that Bing overtook Yahoo! globally for the first time on a monthly basis but it remains a tough battle to claw back Google’s market share,” says Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter.

“Although Google dipped below the 90pc mark in February worldwide for the first time since August 2009, it shows little sign of losing its global dominance any time soon.”

StatCounter Global Stats are based on aggregate data collected on a sample of more than 15bn page views per month from across the StatCounter network of more than 3m websites.

The company also monitors internet market share battles, including browsers, social media and operating systems, including mobile.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com