Bing gains a 0.5% sliver of search share in July; Google loses a fraction

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Microsoft’s Bing won a tiny fraction of the online search market in July, capturing half a percent of the the pie shared by the ‘big five’ search companies, as Google and Yahoo both donated about 0.3%, according to data from ComScore.

July was a slow month for search, with the total number of queries down 3.5% from June, although the 13 billion total searches was still a 15% increase over the same month last year.

In a note to investors that contained the ComScore data, Broadpoint AmTech analyst Benjamin Schachter displayed little enthusiasm about Bing’s upward inching: ‘Although Bing took a bit of share from both GOOG and YHOO, we are reluctant to extrapolate this into meaningful long-term share gains, and note that GOOG still had its second-highest share of monthly queries ever in July [64.7%].’

The ComScore data also show that combined, Microsoft and Yahoo gained 0.2% of the market, but their total search volume dropped 2.6%, pulled down by a 4.7% decrease in Yahoo searches.

Microsoft announced a deal to take over Yahoo’s considerable search busines last month, though the partnership, if approved by regulators, is expected to take at least a year to go into effect.

-- David Sarno