Bing began its second year of operation at the end of May but it didn't get any birthday presents, except for maybe not losing any ground to Google.
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Bing's share of the global search market remained nearly flat in May compared with April, according to numbers released Friday by Web analytics firm comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR).
However, a controversy has come up over how to define a "search."
Recently, both Bing and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) have introduced "slide show" features that are counted as searches as users scroll through them, causing the numbers to be a little off from previous measurements, post on the company's blog.
In the meantime, Schachter said, direct comparisons of market share month to month may be off.
"It is easy to make adjustments for May (based on the numbers provided), but understanding the baseline of comScore's 'core' search will only become less clear," he said in a research note Friday.
"On an adjusted basis, backing out Yahoo and [Bing's] use of contextual shortcuts and image slide shows from both May and April, we estimate YHOO's share declined ... in May to 16.6 percent, while Bing's share was flat month to month at approximately 10.8 percent," Schachter added.
Yahoo's April numbers were 16.9 percent.
Meanwhile, Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) share of the search market gained a point, from 65.4 percent in April to 66.4 percent in May.
However, without taking out the "definitional" changes in comScore's numbers, the scoring comes out somewhat differently.
For instance, without removing the slide show data, Bing holds 12.1 percent, a slight gain from April's 11.8 percent showing, while Yahoo came in at 18.3 percent again a small gain from 17.7 percent in April. Using the same criteria, Google had 63.7 percent share, a slight decline from 64.4 in April.
Stuart J. Johnston is a contributing writer at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.
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