Bing Off to a Solid Start: comScore

Last week StatCounter said that Microsoft's newly released Bing search engine had already surpassed Yahoo!, but I wanted to wait for comScore to weigh in before commenting. On Monday comScore agreed that Bing was off to a solid start, but the real question is whether or not Bing can maintain that market share.

According to comScore:

Microsoft Sites increased its average daily penetration among U.S. searchers from 13.8 percent during the period of May 26-30 to 15.5 percent during the period of June 2-6, 2009, an indication that the search engine is reaching more people than before. Microsoft’s share of search result pages in the U.S., a proxy for overall search intensity, increased from 9.1 percent to 11.1 percent during the same time frame.

“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, comScore senior vice president. “So far it appears that the lifts in searcher penetration and engagement have held relatively steady throughout the five-day period. The ultimate performance of Bing depends on the extent to which it generates more trial through its extensive launch campaign and whether it retains those trial users. It appears it is off to a good start.”

Good starts need to be continued. Much as with the Palm Pre, which some worry will peter out now that the iPhone 3GS has been announced, Bing needs to maintain its gains, or even increase them.

Microsoft Sites Search Performance 6/2/09-6/6/09 vs. 5/26/09-5/30/09 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch
	5/26/09-5/30/09	6/2/09-6/6/09	Point Change
Searcher Penetration (Avg. Daily)	13.8%	15.5%	1.7
Share of Search Results Pages	9.1%	11.1%	2.0