Google Search Slips an Inch, Still Miles Ahead of Bing

Posted 09/14/2011 at 8:10am | by Paul Lilly

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Google is the big man on campus when it comes to search and it's said the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Yahoo, and everyone else trying to carve a larger slice of the search pie, a little slip by Google here and there doesn't add up to anything close to a fall. Does it really matter that Google is the only search player out of the top three to give up a bit of market share?

In the short term, the answer is no, and at this pace, Google has plenty of time before it has to worry about long term results. Here's what happened in August. According to comScore, Google's share of the search market slipped to 64.8 percent, a 0.3 percent drop from July. Meanwhile, Yahoo increased its share from 16.1 percent to 16.3 percent, and Bing moved up .03 percentage points to 14.7 percent. Nothing earth shattering, though it's at least worth pointing out that, according to ComputerWorld, Google's share of the search market is the lowest it's been in two years. Cause for concern?

"Google hitting a two-year low in search share since 2009 and Bing almost doubling its share since 2009 doesn't seem like a coincidence," Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, told ComputerWorld. "Bing has definitely shown some staying power and steady growth in the two years since its introduction. We're seeing continued trench warfare in search with small shifts in share."

Viewing it from that perspective, perhaps Google should fret, even if just a smidgen. Hitting the panic button would be premature, however. It's very possible that Bing could plateau, and while there's a lesson to be learned from the browser wars, in which Microsoft's IE browser is rapidly losing ground to Chrome, Google rules the search scene because it's a good product, not because it would be costly for company's to switch.