Microsoft's Bing Gains from Google's January Dip

Google slips just a little.

Search engine rankings are never really all that surprising. Google is always first, Yahoo! is always second and Bing comes in third every month, without fail. Sometimes Yahoo! or Bing will rise or fall just a little bit and one will benefit from the other's loss, but it's never a massive drop.

January's rankings were no different. Google came first, Yahoo! came second and Microsoft came third, experiencing a slight gain over the previous month. However, in a most unusual turn of events Microsoft has Google to thank for Bing's gain this month.

According to ComScore (via CNet), Google's dominant share of the search market slipped by 0.3 percentage points to 65.4 percent of all searches conducted in the U.S.  As a result, Bing increased by 0.6 percentage points to 11.3 percent of all searches. Yahoo! lost another 0.3 percent, dropping to 17 percent of all searches.

Microsoft Bing has experienced almost consistent growth since it launched last May, rising from 8.4 percent in June to its current 11.3 percent.

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