Microsoft Tops 20 Percent of Desktop Search Market for First Time

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Search rankings

Have you used Bing lately? An increasing number of people are, and perhaps one day it will earn verb status the way Google has. In the meantime, Microsoft can celebrate snagging a 20.1 percent share of the search market as of the end of March, up from 19.8 percent at the end of February. It's also the first time that Microsoft has crossed over the 20 percent mark, according to data provided by comScore.
That's still not enough to touch Google, which remained virtually flat at 64.4 percent (down just a sliver from 64.5 percent), though it's a good bit ahead of Yahoo Sites (12.7 percent) Ask Network (1.8 percent), and AOL (1.1 percent). Out of all of them, Microsoft was the only to increase its share -- the rest either didn't budge or dropped by a hair.
These numbers don't take into consideration searches conducted from mobile devices, and it's not clear if they include consoles, either. They're listed by comScore as being "Desktop Only" from both home and work locations.
As far as desktop searches goes, there were 18.9 billion explicit core searches conducted in March, with Google Sites taking the lion's share of them (12.1 billion, up 11 percent), followed by Microsoft (3.8 billion, up 12 percent).
It's worth pointing out that Microsoft and Yahoo recently amended their 10-year search agreement. It's not yet clear how exactly the revised arrangement will affect search shares of both entities, though if it favors Microsoft, Google may have reason to sweat (just a little).
What's YOUR search engine of choice these days? Sound off in the comments section below!
Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook


More...