Yahoo continues on the decline and this time it’s showing when it comes to search. New search numbers from comScore show that Microsoft’s search engine Bing is now in second place for the U.S. search market. Google, of course, is still number one.

The findings were from month to month. From November 2011 to December 2011, Bing only gained 0.1% market share which put it at 15.1%, however, Yahoo dropped from 15.1% to 14.5%, a 0.6% drop in just one month.

Google has been the top dog in the U.S. search market for quite a while now. They’re still the go to search engine and had 12 Billion requests in December which worked out to a whopping 65.9% market share. Quite the lead having over four times the share of Microsoft’s search engine.

Via USA Today:

“Other research firms track the Internet search market. But comScore’s numbers matter the most to industry analysts and the companies trying to attract queries so they can make more money from the ads that appear alongside the results. Google’s dominance of online search is the main reason it has established itself as the Internet’s most profitable company.”

With the news of Bing surpassing Yahoo, one could assume that means they’re doing well financially as well, though that doesn’t exactly mean that in this case.

“Pursuing Google has come at a huge cost for Microsoft, which still makes most of its money from the Windows operating software and other software it sells for personal computers. Microsoft’s online division, which is anchored by Bing, has suffered operating losses of about $7 billion since June 2008.”

Bing Beats Out Yahoo, Now Second Place To Google In U.S. Search is a post from: The Inquisitr

How do you search? If you are like the majority of people in the United States, you probably use Google. Yep, Google is still the number one search engine by a large margin, but new data released by ComScore today shows that the search engine giant is losing a little steam.

But Google isn’t loosing too much steam. Google still accounts for 64.8 percent of core search traffic, which according to ComScore includes “partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual searches.” That number is just .3 percent down than Google’s score in July.

Still, Google’s small dip is something that both Yahoo and Bing can be proud of. Yahoo! was able to increase its traffic for the second month in a row. Yahoo! accounted for 16.3% of searches in August, which is .2 percent increase from July. Bing is still slightly behind Yahoo! with 14.7% of search traffic, but Bing is also seeing some growth. Bing saw a .3% growth in August.

ComScore writes in its report:

“Americans conducted 19.5 billion total core search queries in August (up 1 percent). Google Sites ranked first with 12.5 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.6 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.6 billion.”

Google is still the front-runner by far. But Yahoo! and Bing are starting to catch up. Of course, those aren’t the only search engines in the game. The ComScore report shows that Ask.com is still getting a fair amount of traffic. Ask delivered more than 500 million searches in August. AOL is still a factor as well, but the former internet giant accounts for just over 1% of search traffic.

Is Google your go-to search engine? When was the last time you used AOL or Ask.com to find what you were looking for?

Google Slips in New Search Engine Study While Bing and Yahoo! Grow is a post from: The Inquisitr

With talk constantly surrounding social media sharing, semantic searches and other ways to browse the web without the need for search engine use, Google and their counterparts are still dominating how internet users find information on the web. A recent Pew Internet study found that search engines are still used by 92% of internet users.

The Pew Internet study regarding search engine use started in 2002 and the biggest difference in 2011 is that more users are taking advantage of search engines to find information.

According to the study 92 percent of users take advantage of search engines, while 59% of users take advantage of search engines on a regular basis. Even older internet users have taken to searches with the 65+ crowd using search engines 87 percent of the time with 37% of users doing so on a regular basis.

Here’s a quick look at the search engine use trending discovered by Pew Internet:

Directly beside search engine use is Email with the same 92% of users also using the service with no statistical differences based on demographics among email users.

The survey included 2,277 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent.

The survey didn’t leave social out of the mix, since the group started examining the field in 2004 social site searching has risen by 11 percent with 65% of users now using social media sources to find information.

How do you prefer to search the internet? I find myself still gravitating towards Google when I perform information searches, however many of the interesting story’s I read these days come from friends on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ which are posted on their profiles or shared directly with me.

Search Engines Used By 92% Of Internet Users [Study] is a post from: The Inquisitr

A very lengthy analysis over at Search Engine Land was posted this morning, detailing a “sting” executed by Google to prove that Bing is ripping off their search engine results.

Using some fairly obscure search terms and even more obscure misspellings of the words, Google lays out a case that they say proves Bing is piggybacking off their carefully built, genre dominating ranking algorithms. Danny Sullivan explains the copyright trap into which Google says Bing readily tumbled:

In the example above, Google’s searched for the correct spelling — tarsorrhaphy — even though torsoraphy was entered. Notice the top listing for the corrected spelling is a page about the medical procedure at Wikipedia.

Over at Bing, the misspelling is NOT corrected — but somehow, Bing manages to list the same Wikipedia page at the top of its results as Google does for its corrected spelling results [pic]… Got it? Despite the word being misspelled — and the misspelling not being corrected — Bing still manages to get the right page from Wikipedia at the top of its results, one of four total pages it finds from across the web. How did it do that?

Sullivan contacted Bing about the findings, and Bing didn’t deny Google’s claims, but did say the experiment sounded “like a hack to confuse and manipulate some of these [data collection] signals.” Google was pretty snitty about the whole situation, and Google Fellow Amit Singhal fumed:

“It’s cheating to me because we work incredibly hard and have done so for years but they just get there based on our hard work… I don’t know how else to call it but plain and simple cheating. Another analogy is that it’s like running a marathon and carrying someone else on your back, who jumps off just before the finish line.”

The Search Engine Land piece heavily, if understandably, came heavily down on the side of Google having a right to be pissed about the Bing-related findings. Forbes had a different take, saying that Google should turn the issue into an ad campaign- “Google: Search So Good, Even Bing Uses It.”

Do you think Google has a right to be irked about Bing’s apparent lifting of at least some of their work?

Google: Bing is jacking our results! is a post from: The Inquisitr

The search partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo was finalized today after federal regulators from the U.S and European Union gave the companies a green light.

The move, a strategic partnership will help both companies cut costs, while fighting against Google who controls 70% of the search market.

Under the deal, Bing will provide Yahoo search results and in return Microsoft will receive part of the ad revenues generated from those searches. For Yahoo it will mean not having to support their own infrastructure for searches, while they’ll be able to focus on their advertising platform and other ventures.

The full integration of both companies technologies is expected to be completed by the end of 2011. [GadgetCrave]

Yahoo And Microsoft Finalize Search Partnership is a post from: The Inquisitr

Rumors have surfaced that Apple may be in talks with Microsoft in an attempt to make the Bing search engine the companies default search product on the iPhone, rather than the more popular Google.

Mashable is reporting that the in-fighting between the companies after Google poached their most recent CEO Eric Schmidt and launched their iPhone competing Nexus One has increased, leading Apple into open discussions with Microsoft.

It’s still unclear whether this deal will affect all iPhones or just the next releases of the companies devices. I personally will jump into my Safari settings and change the default back to Google. Currently only Google and Yahoo are found in those settings, which would make the jump to Bing a rather dramatic move for Apple.

Apple iPhone Browser Could Replace Google Default With Bing Search is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’ve spent the past few hours searching around the tech blogs, SEO blogs, forums and Twitter but haven’t been able to find anyone who has made the connection between the recent Twitter Lists feature and the Twitter search deals between Bing and Google. Surprising, really, so I’ll take a stab at it.

On September 30, 2009, Nick Kallen wrote an official Twitter blog that they had just rolled out a new lists feature to selected users. Rather than rewrite a summary of that blog here, I’ll quote the main points below, followed by my thoughts. Nick wrote:

“The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.”

Essentially, Twitter users will be able to categorize the people they follow. How does this have anything to do with the later announcements of search deals between Microsoft’s Bing search engine and the Google search deal?

Categorizing accounts adds a new layer of meta data to the enormous amount of random bits of information spewing out of Twitter at any given point in time. That meta data makes it much easier for the search engine software to quickly crunch the data for search queries. For instance, someone goes to Google or Bing and searches for “Lakers game tonight.” Rather than having to crunch all the data coming out of Twitter in the past 24 hours, then find and output relevant tweets, the software first looks for tweets by members who are on lists categorized as Sports, Basketball, Lakers, etc. and give those tweets priority.

Nick then goes on to say:

“This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.”

See the paragraph I wrote above…

“We started working on this feature because of the frequent requests we received from people who were looking for a better way to organize information on Twitter. Of course, that means not just twitter.com – the Platform team will follow up in a few days with information on the Lists API. This will allow developers to add support for Lists into your favorite Twitter apps.”

And the new lists API will no doubt be used by Bing and Google as well.

There have been rumors swirling around for nearly a year now about real-time search. Pundits and tech bloggers have been wondering which of the big search engines would be the first to do “real” real-time search and do it right. The biggest problem that’s been standing in the way of real-time search, in my honest opinion, is the sheer amount of random data being produced by social media and the real-time web. Or rather, no plausable way to make that data easily discoverable on the receiving end where the search engines are.

Other big user generated content sites have turned to allowing their users to categorize and tag things in the past. Look at how Flickr encourages it’s users to tag, categorize and comment on photos and video. From the beginning, Myspace and WordPress.com have benefited tremendously by making it natural for users to categorize, comment on and tag stuff. And long before Facebook started tearing down it’s walls, much of it’s tremendous growth has been due to making it easy for users to grow content and networks by making their data easily discoverable. Of late, Google itself has been encouraging searchers to interact with it’s content by voting up and down, removing items from their search pages and add tags or descriptions to photos.

All of what I mentioned above adds meta data that can be used to deliver more relevant results to searchers, faster.

Twitter is a business with a massive amount of user generated data being produced 24 hours around the clock. Those speculating about Twitter’s business model can finally put the subject to rest. They’ve made their product more usable and at least 2 huge companies have jumped committed to using that product.

Meta data. Twitter lists are just the beginning.

Twitter Lists and Real Time Search deals – The Big Picture is a post from: The Inquisitr

A new search engine quietly joined the fray in another attempt to slice and dice search results in a way you didn’t know you needed.

This year saw the launches of engines like Wolfram Alpha, Google Squared and Hunch, and let’s not forget Microsoft’s “decision engine.” The only thing worse than the Bing commercials that seem to still run ad nauseum is that my mother thinks they’re some sort of PSA for internet addiction, never passing up and opportunity to say, “see, Kim? SEE?” when I have the misfortune of catching one with her. While Bing is grabbing a bit of a foothold, it seems from a broad perspective that all of these upstarts are going to have to wake up a bit earlier to grab even a few stragglers from Google’s massive throng of users. (Also known as the internet in general.)

The general premise behind Goby is cute, but essentially sounds like the same song all the other “new” search engines this year are singing. “Google sucks at returning X-type of results, so Goby will optimize your X-search. Of course, it won’t catch on ’til it catches on, so please keep using it while it gets to where it needs to be.” Goby’s singular focus (find me thing to do in place at time) may give it some foothold, but the internet has marinated in Google, and old habits are hard to break. Giving Goby an initial spin seems to indicate some potential in doing what it says it does, but do we really need another search engine to do it?

Test driving Goby returned mixed results. Checking out the pre-listed categories, I did a search under “family fun” for playgrounds near my hometown of Babylon, NY. (Nightlife and restaurants are well-populated and I wanted to see how I fared with something less chronicled on the web.)

Results were fairly useless in this regard, a list of schools which could have been easily located by a Google Maps search for schools.

Next I tried “Indian restaurants,” a cuisine that is sorely underrepresented in this region of NYC suburbs. The results I returned were mainly for restaurants that have closed years ago, something I’d not have known if I were from the area but not a curry slurping fiend or were I merely visiting Long Island, assuming anyone would want to visit Long Island. One last attempt was for general “events” this weekend in my area. The number one result, and one that repeated throughout the top ten (amidst results for a car show, a pumpkin festival and a kids’ play) was “soccer registration” in Stamford, CT. Connecticut is a constant annoyance in search results for Long Islanders, as maps generally don’t recognize the Long Island effing Sound that’s wedged between Long Island and Connecticut. So while it may technically be under 25 miles away, I’m not hopping in my boat to go get samosas and biryani in New Haven. Ain’t happening, Goby.

While Goby may yet find an audience, those who are a little skilled in returning better Google results will probably end up sticking to what they know.

Goby is a new search engine, for finding “stuff to do” is a post from: The Inquisitr

From a Flickr founder, new search engine Hunch is out of private beta today.

So if you’re Binged out, you’ve been Google Squared and got your kosher-search on, you might need a bit of a helping hand with your next search. Hunch promises to help you find what you’re looking for on the web in “ten questions or less.” Huh. But in a searchy world where Google Answers, Wikia Search and MSN QnA have all disappeared from the landscape, will users trust the collective opinion?

Caterina Fake thinks so. Fake co-founded Flickr and had something to do with Yahoo! Answers before moving on to create Hunch. As you use it, Hunch asks a variety of seemingly irrelevant questions about you- are alien abductions real? Who makes the best fries? Do you like bumper cars? Building on your answers, the site compiles a demographic profile to find the best search results when you need them.

Clearly the site needs more input to work as intended. Earlier today, as I answered the random questions (not geared to a specific search) it would indicate that X% of users responded with that answer. But if it was a choice of three answers, my result was always the same as 33% of respondents, with no variance.

So I took the direct approach, selecting a question from the dropdown menu at the upper right hand corner of the page. Typing in “is” lead to a bunch of questions- I chose “is my partner cheating on me?” (Sorry, honey, it’s for work!)

A series of questions followed- does he tell you where he’s going? Do you both say “I love you?” Does he let you in on his schedule? After the promised ten questions, I was awarded with this result:

I don’t think Hunch will replace Google, nor is it looking to. But it might provide a comfy home for the legions of search engine surfers seeking answers to more personal questions like should I marry my boyfriend or is my son gay?

Hunch currently has a user satisfaction rate of 80%, and Fake believes with more users, it can go as high as 90-95%. So, what do you think? Will you be using Hunch?

Revolutionary search engine #2394: Hunch is a post from: The Inquisitr

Designed- sort of, I suppose- to cut down on users having to perform multiple searches of different type (news, image, web)- Google Squared returns search results in a spreadsheet-like form that leans more toward dada than dynamic content.

Creative soul that I am, I looked about for something common to search and get an idea for how results were returned. I tried coffee (first thing in my line of sight) and received a bunch of random results that didn’t really seem to serve any conceivable quest for coffee knowledge. Undaunted (and still apparently low on ideas), my eyes traveled to my browser window. Inquisitr, I figured, might return something more judgeable… Alas, no, just a random collection of articles from the site and no information that would be of any use to me if I hadn’t already visited the site.

“Aha!” thought I, cleverly adding my own (somewhat uncommon) name to the search query box. Surely being clearly a person’s name, with a date of birth and location attached, it would return some worthwhile results. Not the case- amid random license numbers (not attached to my name and with no clear connection to my search) were a few entries on “Computer Literacy,” “Consumer Science,” and a random picture of the food pyramid.

Are you trying to tell me something, Google? At once I felt fat, stupid, unlicensed and wholly irrelevant.

Reaction to the new Google product seems to be a chorus of “meh.” To save you the clicks, I performed a sample search on “your mother.”

Ha, ha! Okay, on to the results:

As you can see, results contained several references to How I Met Your Mother, the reality guilt-cruise Intervention (illustrated with a cute but ostensibly not-related web comic) and references to a sex act involving Maple Syrup. (Is your mom Canadian?)

The real downside to this initiative, I suspect, is the relative ubiquity of Google already. Power users have tweaked and shortcutted their way to a real Google dependence (google-fu even shows up on resumes) and won’t want to learn a new system even if it is really funny when you’re high. Less web-savvy users like your parents and the dude you share a cubicle with already use their AOL mail for everything. So Google Squared might have a hard time catching on with either segment.

But Google is quick to point out that Squared still needs a lot of tweaking- it may prove relevant. Continued usage may make the content less ethereal, but for now, it’s a little like a Google-based Magic 8 Ball. Amusing, but not really real-life useful.

From the “if it ain’t broke” files: Google Squared is a post from: The Inquisitr

Associated Search

The first change is designed to provide better “related searches” at the bottom of your search page. Google describes it as a “new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search.” The system, engineers say, will recognize a greater number of queries and languages and deliver more relevant terms.

Longer Descriptions

The second change simply extends the excerpt quoted under each result in certain circumstances. Basically, Google will show longer snippets for longer search terms: If you enter a four-word search term, for example, Google will add extra lines onto the snippets to give you a more detailed view of the various pages.

Exciting? Not exactly. But one of the changes could theoretically come in handy at some point, I guess. Maybe.

Google Tweaking Its Search Results Pages is a post from: The Inquisitr

An unnamed executive argued the case by suggesting those “who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately” in the current Google ranking system.

Don’t Misread This

Here’s where the argument has been misconstrued, though: The media giants aren’t asking for automatic preferential treatment based on their brand names alone, as some commentators have suggested. Rather, according to AdAge, the publishers are asking for original content providers — whether it’s them, a blog, or whomever — to receive an elevated result.

“This would in no way mean that only professional content publishers would get an advantage,” another unnamed executive is quoted as saying. “It really just says that the original source, and the source with real access, should somehow be recognized as the most important in the delivery of results.”

Google Talks

Google, for its part, has indicated it does place some value on original content but also looks at other factors. (How enlightening.) A spokesperson told AdAge there are “many shades of gray” even within the designation of “original content.”

The subject is expected to be discussed at a meeting of Google’s Publishers Advisory Council at the end of April.

Some Thoughts

I could understand an outrage if the media companies were asking for preferential treatment based on their names alone. The idea of giving stronger weight to an original content provider, however, seems to me to be a reasonable enough concept. While secondary sources often provide valuable alternate perspectives to news coverage, it is sensible to say — from both a content provider perspective and an end-user perspective — that the publication that broke the news should be credited as such. As long as the weight is given equally for any original content provider, be it a major media site or an independent blog site, I think it’s a notion worth Google’s consideration.

With that being said, of course, no single factor can determine search ranking. Without having any direct knowledge of the workings of Google’s current system, though, I can say from anecdotal experience that being an original provider often doesn’t seem to be significantly rewarded within results. It’s impossible to surmise how much that designation does play into a rank, or even how that designation is determined. As long as Google keeps its transparency curtain closed, we’ll never know the specifics of what really goes on or whether it changes over time.

Should Original Content Providers Get Higher Google Priority? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Media measuring company HitWise released its May data this morning. The researcher found Google took a full 68 percent of all U.S. searches in the month, followed by Yahoo at just under 20 percent, MSN at about six, and ask.com at four. Other smaller engines made up the remaining searches.

In the UK, Google’s lead is even stronger. HitWise measured Google getting more than 87 percent of all searches in May, leaving Yahoo and Microsoft-based searches with only about four each, and ask.com with just over three percent.

It’s an increasingly common trend for the search giants. Both ComScore and HitWise showed Google with a sizeable lead in April as well, though significantly less extreme than the May results show. That data also marked the first time Google had overtaken Yahoo in terms of overall traffic, not specific only to searches.

Google Gains Another Winning Month is a post from: The Inquisitr

Wikia Search is relaunching with several new features today. As the name might suggest, the utility lets you actually customize and edit search results. You can add or delete results from any given search — something the big league search sites would sooner shut down than allow.

The updated Wikia Search includes the ability to rank items, add “related site” entries to a find, comment on entries, and even access a Google or Yahoo search from within the Wikia results. The site is also toying with the idea of some social networking features such as personal profiles and the ability to make “friends.”

Wikia makes its belief in transparency quite clear. You can look at a list of recent changes to entries to track how and by whom any given result was modified. The site’s list of principles even takes a shot at the major search engines’ insistence upon keeping their results and their methods so closely guarded.

So can searching really work as an open and democratic process? It’ll sure be interesting to watch this one and see how it affects things. We’ve all grown accustomed to Google’s complex and untouchable algorithm-based methods. I don’t know that Wikia Search’s concept will ever knock that kind of system out of the mainstream, but it definitely adds an interesting twist into the equation — particularly for SEO-focused web developers who might have to cater to a different kind of ranking protocol.

“Democratic” Search Engine Unveils Improvements is a post from: The Inquisitr