By Ben Hollom
The latest figures for the UK search engine market for March, from digital research provider StatCounter, revealed that Google has picked up since February, whereas Bing lost some of its share over the same period.
Google has gained back what it lost in previous months and secured a market share of more than 90% in March, snatching a total of 90.46%, which is up from the 89.38% in February. In the UK, Google is the absolute power in search, as British users rarely seem to use other search engines at all. By contrast, across the Atlantic, Google´s dominance is not as overwhelming; Google still tops the chart, but owns 61% of the market.
The second best player on the UK market continues to be Microsoft´s Bing, with a 5.37% share; it did, however, lose 0.61% in March. Yahoo came third, with 2.58%, adding just 0.01% to its overall share last month. In the US, Bing and Yahoo swapped places, standing at 15% and 17% respectively.
Separate analyses from Nielsen and Experian have suggested that Bing is gradually expanding its user base globally and has established itself as the single real competitor for Google. Apparently, Google´s leading position in search will not be threatened for years to come, particularly in the UK, but Bing does not look like it is going to take its second position lightly. Over the past few months, it launched several attacks on Google, accusing it of misleading its users with paid search results and launching an April Fool campaign against it.