WebProNews

Last week, StatCounter indicated that Bing had experienced its first bad month, losing market share between August and September.  Some people, perhaps understandably, had trouble accepting this.  But Hitwise has now provided its own figures, and they, too, show that Microsoft's new offering hit a rough patch. 

Bing suffered a five percent month-over-month slip heading into September, according to Hitwise, which took it from a U.S. market share of 9.48 percent down to 8.96 percent.  That has to be distressing for Microsoft, since it might indicate that people have finished experimenting with the search engine.

What's more, it appears that market leader Google already vacuumed up most or all of the loose searchers.  Google's market share increased from 70.24 percent to 71.08 percent between August and September, giving it a one percent gain.

Yahoo, meanwhile, imitated its would-be semi-owner, slipping three percent from a standing of 16.96 percent to 16.38 percent.

Then, surprisingly, Ask also merited mention, managing to increase its market share by eight percent from 2.37 percent to 2.56 percent.

September was an odd month in the search industry.  We'll keep an eye out for October's stats, which should help decide whether it represented a fluke or the start of some interesting new trends.