Yes, Google’s worried about Microsoft’s new Bing search engine.
Worried enough that earlier this week it ran a promo for several days under its search box inviting people to learn more about Google — a very rare self-promotional act for the search titan.
And then the New York Post reported that Google founders have pulled together a crackerjack team of scientists and geniuses to improve Google’s algorithm.
But really, Google has little to worry about as it has 65 percent of the search market and will keep gaining even as Bing draws a bigger crowd in the future months.
The one who has to worry is Yahoo.
Those Bing users aren’t ex-Googlers since Google hasn’t lost one iota of a percentage of usage, according to new statistics from comScore, an Internet tracking research firm. In fact, it gained share. Many of additional users are likely ex-Yahoo aficionados searching for a better search experience.
Here’s the breakdown of United States Internet search activity for last month:
| comScore Core Search Report* May 2009 vs. April 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch |
|||
| Core Search Entity | Share of Searches (%) | ||
| Apr-09 | May-09 | Point Change May-09 vs. Apr-09 | |
| Total Core Search | 100.0 | 100.0 | N/A |
| Google Sites | 64.2 | 65.0 | 0.8 |
| Yahoo! Sites | 20.4 | 20.1 | -0.3 |
| Microsoft Sites** | 8.2 | 8.0 | -0.2 |
| Ask Network | 3.8 | 3.9 | 0.1 |
| AOL LLC | 3.4 | 3.1 | -0.3 |
(Chart courtesy of comScore.com)
Search is more popular than ever: According to the research report, we Americans conducted 14.3 billion searches using the top search engines. Google Sites grabbed 9.3 billion of that pie; Yahoo Sites had 2.9 billion and Microsoft Sites with 1.1 billion.