Bing has over taken Yahoo! as the second most used search engine in the US, although trailing behind Google. According to Neilsen, in August Google’s US search share was 65.1% with Microsoft MSN/Live/Bing at 13.9% edging just in front of Yahoo! at 13.1%.
It’s worth remembering that Microsoft Bing commenced powering part of Yahoo! searches starting on 24th August. However the Yahoo! search results powered by Bing were counted as Yahoo! searches in the Nielsen data. If they were counted as Bing searches then Microsoft’s search share would rise to 26%.
Bing has come a long way since it’s launch and Microsoft have made considerable investment including their cash back program which was retired in June of this year.
The next big target has to be closing the gap with Google, and of course increasing adoption of Bing outside of the US. For US online sellers Bing Shopping is definitely a shopping comparison engine that shouldn’t be ignored, especially as like Google it’s free.