San Francisco (CA) – Google has continued to dominate the US search market. According to Hitwise, the Mountain View giant accounted for 74 percent of all (US) searches conducted during the four weeks ended June 27. This figure is slightly higher than the one recorded in May and marks a salient increase from the 69 percent posted in June, 2008.
Meanwhile, Yahoo managed to capture 16 percent – down from 20 percent last June – while Ask plummeted to 3.2 percent. In contrast, Microsoft’s Bing posted relatively high search-engine growth, increasing from 3.4 percent in the first week of the month to 6.63 percent by the month’s end.
It should be noted that a recent ComScore survey indicated that Bing’s searcher penetration has risen concurrently, from 13.7 in the last week of May to 16.7 percent on the week of 6/8/09-6/12/09.
“These early data reflect a continued positive market reaction to Bing in the initial stages of its launch,” explained ComScore senior vice president Mike Hurt.
Nevertheless, Bing is unlikely to pose a serious threat to Google’s current search market dominance. Indeed, Microsoft’s biggest challenge will be to differentiate itself from Google with the introduction of unique features – such as the interactive video thumbnails currently offered on Bing.
