Microsoft Bing grabs search share from Google

Computerworld - After struggling for a few months, Microsoft's Bing search engine showed growth in the U.S. in June.

While still lagging far behind Google, Bing showed greater growth than its main search rival last month, according to a report from comScore, Inc., an Internet research company. Bing, which had its first anniversary in late May, saw its search share in the U.S. market increase from 12.1% in May to 12.7% in June.

Google lost a little ground last month with its search share dipping from 63.7% in May to 62.6% last month. Second-place Yahoo had slightly better news with its bite of the search market edging up from 18.3% to 18.9%.

According to comScore, Americans conducted 16.4 billion searches in June, up 3% from the previous month.

Bing may not have seen a huge increase in its share of the lucrative search market last month, but the uptick was good news for a service that has seen its share of ups and downs in the past several months.

Microsoft's search engine, which was a total revamp of the company's far-from-beloved Microsoft Live Search, had made strong gains in market share in the first months after its release last year, but by early 2010, it had lost some momentum and saw its numbers hold steady or slip.

Industry analysts have noted that users are simply accustomed to engaging Google's highly popular search engine, and that they will need a strong reason to switch.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed . Her e-mail address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

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