17 September 2009 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

Bing is fastest growing search engine in the US

Microsoft's search engine Bing is becoming a fierce competitor to Google, securing a market share of nearly 11 per cent since its launch in June.

The Times reports that Bing is currently the fastest growing search engine in the United States, according to the latest research published by Nielsen. Bing's market share increased from 9 per cent in July to 10.7 per cent in August - an increase of 22 per cent month-on-month compared to Google's increase of only 2.6 per cent in the same period.

Google is still the dominant force in the search engine field with 65 per cent of the market share, but may face tough competition as Microsoft's "decision engine" continues to innovate new search functions.

In the three months since its launch, Bing has continually strived to demonstrate its strength as an alternative to the traditional "ten blue links" search engine format of Google, and recently introduced visual search which offers thumbnail images of products to online shoppers. But Google is hardly sitting still, innovating its own new features such as Google Fast Flip, which allows easier browsing of online news articles.

Bing director Stefan Weitz has outlined plans to make the decision engine more relevant for the European market, and more responsive to the needs of users. Research suggests that internet users in different nations use search engines differently - with British users searching for more news content than other nations, for example - and Microsoft aims to tailor Bing to specific national audiences to produce a more personalised search result.

The UK looks to be a major target market for Bing in the future, as it seeks to combat Google's even more impressive dominion of 90 per cent of the British search engine market.