Microsoft’s long march to gain a greater share of the search engine market, took a small step forward this week when Nielsen reported that the software giant’s Bing search engine slightly eclipsed Yahoo’s share of the U.S. search market in August.
But while Bing and Yahoo slug it out, their main rival, Google, continues to dominate. Google hasn’t been sitting still either; just last week the company unveiled a major overhaul of its search engine that includes quicker response time and, generally, fewer clicks to get to the results.
Ecommerce Guide reports on the latest search market share research by The Nielsen Company.
It took 15 months from when it launched, but Microsoft
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s Bing search technology finally pulled ahead of Yahoo search and into second place behind Google, at least in the U.S., according to one leading Web analytics firm.
The Nielsen Company said that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Bing outstripped partner Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) in August, pulling slightly ahead of Yahoo search.
“For the first time, MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search overtook Yahoo as the number two search engine in the U.S. with a 13.9 percent share of search volume in August 2010,” said a post to the NielsenWire blog on Tuesday.