Bing Captures More Search Share (MSFT, GOOG, YHOO, IACI)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

It is usually questionable if Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and its new Bing.com search engine is stealing from Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) or from Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) when it comes to gains in the share of internet search.  Or maybe it was IAC/InteractiveCorp. (NASDAQ: IACI) and its Ask.com distant #4 search product.  Hitwise is only one source which measures U.S. searches, but a reading of searches conducted in the four weeks ending Oct. 31, 2009 showed a gain for Bing. Hitwise showed that Bing is clearly taking more from Google and some from Yahoo!.  Even Ask.com got a little lift this time.  Hitwise gave the following data:

Gooogle was 71.08% of search in September, but that shrank by a factor 0.01 to 70.6% in October.  Yahoo! was 16.38% in September, but that also shrank by a factor of 0.01 to 16.14%.

Microsoft’s Bing.com is taking back some share of the search market as the September reading of 8.96% share of the search market grew by a factor of 0.07 to 9.57% of the share of search.

IAC/InterActiveCorp’s distant #4 search product, Ask.com, had September search share of 2.56%.  That rose by a factor of 0.02 to 2.62% for October.  That figure used to be higher, so maybe Diller and the IAC team are trying to garner more glue that holds all the IAC sites together.

At this rate, Bing and Yahoo! combined are just over 25%.  It won’t be easy to force this change, but if the two companies can get back to above a combined 30% share between the two then they will be able to show that they have a real and true answer to the Google search universe.

JON C. OGG
NOVEMBER 11, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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