The comScore search engine data for April isn’t out until tomorrow, but Search Engine Land has an unnamed source that has given them a rundown of the numbers. The story they tell is one we saw unfolding as far back as March. That is, both Google and Bing are rising in search market share, while search traffic for Yahoo! is decreasing.
In April 2012, Yahoo! had 13.5% of the search market pie, down from 15.9% in April 2011. That 2.4% loss went straight to Bing and Google. Bing is up 1.3% since last April and Google is up 1.1%. Though Yahoo! and Bing could be considered one search engine, since Bing now powers Yahoo! search, the sum of their shares doesn’t even add up to half of Google’s dominant 66.5% share of the market.
This is more bad news for Yahoo!, which has had quite a bit of bad news lately. With its CEO under fire for (whether he knew it or not) falsifying his resume, Yahoo! needs more than huge layoffs to begin to compete as more than an entertainment news page. As Google and Bing slowly eat away at the remnants of Yahoo!’s search share, it remains to be seen whether any other competitors, such as Facebook, can enter the market and make it more than a two-horse race. Perhaps Bing’s new search results system and layout will help entice those users leaving Yahoo! Microsoft is banking on improved social search to be the feature that differentiates it from Google.
What do you think? Should Yahoo! abandon search altogether? Will the new Bing have what it takes to make a dent in Google’s lead? Leave a comment below and let us know.