Yesterday, Sharon Gaudin wrote an article about comScore’s most recent report, which lauded Bing’s 9.3% share of the search market. This report reflected Bing’s position at the end of August, and illustrates a significant increase from 4.8% of market share in early July. Consequently, Google’s share slipped 0.1%, with the search behemoth now holding onto 64.6% of the search market. Also included in this report was notice that Yahoo! has maintained its position of second most-search engine with 19.3%; AOL, however, dropped by 3%. Similar reports by Neilson Co., reported that Bing had reached 10.7% of total market share for search advertising. According to Ezra Gottheil, of Technology Business Research, Bing’s recent success has positioned the new search engine to become, “…the other search engine.”

According to this study, there are two further developments that are expected to increase Bing’s clout:

• Microsoft’s beta release of Bing Visual Search (similar to Google Image Search).
• Yahoo! and Microsoft’s recent alliance, which will see Yahoo! using Bing as its primary search engine.

According to Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group, Inc.:

“I think it will be another couple of quarters before we can tell if Bing will be a serious competitor for Google search,” he added. “Google is definitely taking the Bing threat seriously, despite its still-overwhelming market position. Google understands just how important this battle is. More importantly, they know that Microsoft and Yahoo are determined this time to grab a big slice of the market. The resources that Microsoft and Yahoo can devote to the battle, along with their determination, make them a serious threat to Google. And Google knows it.”

While Olds has it right in saying that Bing has not significantly affected Google’s position as the world’s foremost search engine, it is safe to say Bing’s recent success is nothing less than impressive. Further, these new findings are sure to lead to more resources being used by each of the major players, as they compete to further (or retain) their market reach.

via Sharon Gaudin@ computerworld.com