Microsoft’s Bing overtakes Yahoo globally (again)
Chalk up yet another victory for Microsoft’s Bing search engine. It has overtaken Yahoo in search traffic for the month of January 2010, according to web analytics company StatCounter.
The company says this is the first time Bing has ever surpassed Yahoo, but that’s only according to StatCounter data. In September 2010, the research company Nielsen found that Bing ousted Yahoo as the second place search engine worldwide.
It’s not unusual for web analytics companies to have differing data, but it’s definitely worth taking note when their disparate data ultimately reaches the same conclusion. Now Bing is clearly even more of a threat to Yahoo.
Statcounter found that Bing accounted for 4.37 percent of searches globally, while Yahoo only held 3.93 percent. Their single digit traffic also goes to show just how powerful Google is with its 89.94 percent of the market. In the US, Yahoo still holds a slight lead over Bing at 9.74 percent versus 9.03 percent. Earlier this month, Hitwise noted that Bing’s usage saw a significant bump in January — going so far as to take search share from Google in the US.
Bing also powers Yahoo’s search in the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Mexico, so Yahoo’s success in those markets is still helping out Microsoft. Bing will completely replace Yahoo’s search back-end globally in 2012. Yahoo announced in July of 2009 that it would be giving up on its own search technology and teaming up with Microsoft to take on Google.
