New "Bing" Search Engine Giving Microsoft a Boost

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 9, 2009 - 8:46am.

Reston, Va. - The launch of its new "Bing" search engine last week has had a substantial effect on Microsoft's (NASD: MSFT) position in the Internet search market, according to new figures released by Internet audience measurement firm comScore.

During the week ending June 6, the company's average daily penetration among U.S. searchers increased from 13.8% to 15.5%, while its share of search result pages grew 2% to 11.1%.

"These initial data suggest that Microsoft Bing has generated early interest, resulting in a spike in search engagement and an immediate term improvement to Microsoft's position in the search market," said Mike Hurt, a senior vice president at comScore.

According to figures from StatCounter, Bing late last week overtook Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) as No. 2 search engine; both still lag far behind market-leader Google (NASD: GOOG).

http://snipurl.com/jsbdp (comScore)

http://www.bing.com