Microsoft’s share of U.S. Internet searches rose modestly in June with the launch of Bing accounting for 8.4 percent of queries, up from 8 percent in May, according to comScore.
Yahoo saw its search share fall to 19.6 percent, from 20.1 percent in May, while Google’s share remained flat at 65 percent.
In a report, Douglas Anmuth, an analyst for Barclays Capital, wrote he had been expecting Bing’s share to come in between 10 percent and 11 percent. He said the comScore data was good news to investors of Google and Yahoo concerned about Bing’s initial impact.
“While the share gain is positive for Microsoft, and Bing was the only one of the 3 large search engines to increase queries [from month to month], we had expected Bing share to come in between 10-11%,” Anmuth wrote.
Mike Nichols
“As a result, we believe the search data is a slight positive for both Google & Yahoo, and it should serve as a sigh of relief to some investors who were concerned about the early impact of Bing. Bing’s gains did come virtually all from Yahoo, but the overall impact was still less than anticipated.”
In a statement, Mike Nichols, general manager of Bing, said the company was “gratified to see some upward momentum for Bing in the public numbers from comScore” and was working hard to “build a loyal fan base for Bing.”
In a recent blog post, Microsoft reported that Bing saw 8 percent growth in unique users in June and that advertiser TigerDirect had seen its sales and order volume triple since the launch of Bing.
