Google's Search Market Share Drops as Bing Passes 17%

Google's search market share dropped somewhat once again, with Microsoft and Yahoo slightly edging up, according to comScore's April 2013 search engine rankings.

Google dropped 0.6 percent in April, dropping from March's 67.1 percent to 66.5 percent. However, this is precisely the same search percentage as in April 2012, so their overall search market share in the U.S. has remained stable.

Microsoft's Bing saw the biggest increase with a total search market share of 17.3 percent, making it a 0.4 percent increase in April 2013 over their search share in March 2013. By contrast, it is a very important increase from April 2012, where Microsoft had only 15.4 percent share.

Yahoo has continued a downward slide, despite Marissa Mayer taking over as Yahoo’s CEO and wanting to get Yahoo back in the search game. In April 2012, Yahoo had a 13.5 percent share, but they have dropped by 1.5 percent in the last year, as they are now sitting at 12 percent for April 2013.

While Google is still the huge powerhouse when it comes to search market share in the US, Microsoft / Bing is certainly making its presence known with a nearly 2 percent increase from this time last year. However, when comparing year to year, Yahoo and Microsoft are simply swapping market share between themselves, rather than making a dent in Google’s dominance, something Mayer, sees as a major problem.

Meanwhile, Ask's April search market share remained unchanged from March at 2.7 percent, but AOL's dropped from 1.6 percent to 1.4 percent in April.

Of the 20 billion searches conducted in April, Google led with 13.3 billion, followed by Bing at 3.5 billion, Yahoo at 2.4 billion, Ask at 539 million, and AOL with 290 million.