Google's grip on search share slips

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 13 (UPI) -- U.S. Internet search giant Google is fast losing ground to Microsoft's Bing, an industry research firm said Wednesday.

Research firm Experian Hitwise said Google's share of searches was 64.42 percent in March, down from 66.69 percent in February, The Los Angeles Times reported.

WebProNews tracked Google's slide from September, when it commanded 72.15 percent of the search market. That dropped to 70.68 percent in October, the beginning of a six-month slide.

Bing in March accounted for 30.01 percent of U.S. searches, up from 28.48 percent in February.

Bing refers to "Bing-powered" searches, with Yahoo searches powered by Bing. Separately, search.yahoo.com took 15.69 percent of the market share in March, while bing.com took 14.32 percent.

Google's share fell 3 percent in the month, while Bing-powered searches rose 5 percent, search.yahoo.com searches rose 5 percent and bing.com searches rose 6 percent.

At stake is advertising dollars and customer satisfaction. Experian Hitwise said, "Yahoo! Search and Bing achieved the highest success rates in March 2011. This means that for both search engines, more than 80 percent of searches executed resulted in a visit to a Web site."

In the same month, "Google achieved a success rate of 66 percent," Experian Hitwise said.