It took 15 months from when it launched, but Microsoft'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.
By comparison, Yahoo Search logged a 13.1 percent user share of U.S. searches in August. At the same time, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) pulled in a 65.1 percent share, which has remained basically flat for the past year.
Microsoft launched Bing in late May 2009. Since then, it has slowly picked up user share, but it had never broken into the number two position before.
Bing still has a long way to go to threaten Google's solid leadership slot, though.
Yahoo's share declined by 18 percent over the past year. Bing, in the meantime, grew by 30 percent overall since August 2009, making it obvious that Microsoft's growth has come primarily at the expense of Yahoo -- the software giant's partner.
In July, Google's share was 64.2 percent versus 14.3 percent for Yahoo and 13.6 percent for Bing.
Microsoft and Yahoo inked a deal last winter whereby the Bing technology will provide the search infrastructure for Yahoo sites in return for Microsoft getting a share of the advertising revenues for ten years.
The two companies finished integrating Bing search into Yahoo's sites on August 24, but Nielsen did not count that as traffic to Bing.
"The eight days of Bing-powered search on Yahoo are not included in the Bing number," a Nielsen Company spokesperson said in an e-mail to InternetNews.com. "Both Bing and Yahoo will continue to be reported as separate entities," the spokesperson added.
Stuart J. Johnston is a contributing writer at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @stuartj1000.
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