Bing

Optimized for Bing

Bing is a search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions.

According to Web analytics company StatCounter, Bing has overtaken Yahoo in January to become the No.2 search engine worldwide.

Once you see the numbers though, it’s tough not to feel sorry for both Bing and Yahoo, since Google’s global market share in February was 89.94% — with Bing following at 4.37% and Yahoo at 3.93%. And while Google has fallen below 90% for the first time since August 2009, the gap between it and its competitors is still incredibly large. No matter how much money Microsoft continues to throw at this, the No.1 spot seems a certainty for Google for the forseeable future.

Also interesting is that Microsoft may not necessarily gain that much from Yahoo’s loss, since Bing also powers Yahoo’s search results in certain countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and Mexico. In the US, Yahoo still retains a slight lead over Bing with 9.74% of the market compared to 9.03% (Google’s share is 79.63%).

StatCounter’s report is based on aggregate data collected on a sample of over 15 billion page views per month from across the Statcounter network of about 3 million sites. Therefore, conflicting reports may come out at some point, but one thing’s for certain: Bing is on the rise, even if it’s not growing fast enough to make Google nervous in any way.