According to analytics firm StatCounter, the Bing search engine has just overtaken Yahoo for the first time worldwide during the month of February 2011. From StatCounter Global Stats, Bing closed out the month with a 4.37% search share compared with Yahoo’s 3.93%. However, both still fall far behind Google’s search share of 89.94% of the global market.
“It is significant that Bing overtook Yahoo globally for the first time,” said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen, “but it remains a tough battle to claw back Google’s search market share.”
Cullen also noted that this past month was the first time Google dipped below 90% since August of 2009, but that it shows “little sign of losing its global dominance any time soon.”
Before the folks over at Bing break out the party hats, though, here’s some advice: StatCounter hasn’t always been the most reliable of Web tracking services in the past. For example, in 2009, StatCounter found that Bing had passed Yahoo in the U.S., then fell back to the #3 position. Meanwhile, competing firm comScore said that Bing’s search share in the U.S. was doing well, even climbing up percentage points, not losing them.
So when does Bing get to celebrate? When multiple firms independently publish the same findings. Until then, cautious optimism is prescribed.
