Microsoft’s Bing search engine has captured more than 20% of the US desktop search market for the first time since it launched, leaving Google with 64.4%, according to the Guardian newspaper on Sunday.
Bing was up 0.3 percentage points in March to 20.1%, while both Yahoo and Google fell 0.1 percentage points, according to the latest data from research firm comScore.
Microsoft has steadily pumped money and resources into Bing, attempting to carve out a chunk of the search market. It has integrated Bing search technology into existing Microsoft products including the Xbox, Windows, Windows Phone and Office to attempt to get users using Bing and shoehorned from Google.
Microsoft’s slow and steady rise since Bing was launched in 2009 and has been at the expense of its search partner Yahoo, which claimed 20% of the US search market before Bing’s arrival. However, Bing also powers Yahoo’s search engine in some situations, including standard organic search, making Microsoft’s total reach just under 33%.
Google dominates in Europe, with a 90.94% share in March, leaving Bing with 3.37% and Yahoo with 2.1%, but again Google was down from a peak of 95.1% in June 2011.
Inside Iran's search market Google owns the sector with 90.78% with Yahoo following a distant second with 4.97% market share, according to MVF Global. Bing scores a lowly 40th place, behind all local sites on Alexa's ranking system. Local search engine Yooz launched in 2014, claims an even worse score coming in at 230th in the local search rankings.
Due to the nature of Iran's internet usage exact figures are hard to come by as many people use Virtual Private Networks to access the internet, muddying the actual statistics as they appear from another IP address and seem to be in a foreign country.
