Google Loses Ground, Bing Maintains Swagger in March

According to comScore’s latest figures, Google’s competitors gobbled up its lost market share in March, as Bing continued its upward climb. Meanwhile, Facebook sustained its rapid growth as a search entity in the U.S.

Google Sites finished with 65.1 percent of the U.S. core search market in March, down 0.4 percentage points from 65.5 percent in February, according to comScore. Meanwhile, Yahoo! Sites finished in second with 16.9 percent of the market, up 0.1 points from 16.8 percent in the previous month.

Microsoft Sites finished in third with 11.7 percent of the market, up 0.2 points from 11.5 percent in February. Ask Network was fourth with 3.8 percent of the search market, up 0.1 points from 3.7 percent in the prior month.

AOL LLC Network finished fifth with 2.5 percent of the market, which was unchanged from February.

Approximately 15.4 billion searches were conducted in the U.S. in March, which was up 7 percent from February. Google claimed 10.0 billion of these queries, while Yahoo! handled 2.6 billion, Microsoft handled 1.8 billion, Ask took 593 million and AOL handled 380 million.

Of the top expanded search entities (or, “the top properties where search activity is observed”), Facebook saw the biggest month-over-month percent gain, as it handled 647 million queries during March, up 48 percent from the 436 million it handled in February.

Google announced its acquisition of Plink on Monday. Plink is a U.K.-based visual-search provider that gained Google’s attention with its Android app, PlinkArt, which allows users to take pictures of paintings and upload them so that Plink can identify the artwork’s details.

Meanwhile, Apple took a subtle swipe at Google with the search button in its new iPhone OS 4.0, which used to say “Google” but now merely says “Search.” While this doesn’t signal a concrete shift (yet) for Apple, it does continue the growing rift between Apple and Google.

To add fuel to the fire, the New York Times reported that Google is readying its own tablet computing devices. It will run Android, of course, and will act as “an e-reader that would function like a computer.”

Sources:</strong

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/4/comScore_Releases_March_2010_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20002254-93.html

http://www.pcworld.com/article/165749/bing_vs_google_vs_yahoo_feature_smackdown.html?tk=rel_news

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/multi-search/19869/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+SearchEngineJournal+(Search+Engine+Journal)

http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/google_vs_apple/apple_to_shed_google_for_bing_on_iphone_redux.html

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/nyt-google-android-tablet-imminent/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/index+(Wired:+Index+3+(Top+Stories+2))