One month does not a search engine make.
But it's clear from the comScore's U.S. search rankings in November that Microsoft's Bing search engine is making market share gains, and Yahoo's share of queries are falling.
Google's queries, meanwhile, continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace.
The question arises, then, whether the pending Bing-Yahoo search partnership finds Bing throwing in its lot with a partner in decline or whether Yahoo can turn things around.
And, is Bing picking up most of its market share from new-partner Yahoo instead of big-time target Google? [The Ask Network and AOL showed market share dips of 10 basis points each in November, as well.]
In November 2009, Google's market share in search hit a record high of 65.6%, and that amounted to growth of 20 basis points versus October 2009, comScore shows.
Microsoft websites, including Bing, in November continued their steady growth since the Bing launch half a year ago and took a 10.3% market share, an increase of 40 basis points since October 2009. That's faster than Google is growing, but Bing has a lot longer way to go.
And, Yahoo! websites' search market share in the U.S. fell 50 basis points to a 17.5% market share in November, according to comScore.
"Bing clearly is showing still-early but significant market share gains," says Citi's Mark Mahaney in a research note. "Yahoo is clearly experiencing a material share loss in one of its two core businesses. This puts greater pressure on the company to demonstrate a credible growth strategy with its display advertising segment."
Mahaney points to Google's market share gains as "incrementally positive," although he cautions that Google faces "very significant competition from Internet-related companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft."
Since the Bing launch, and with a ton of marketing dollars behind it, Microsoft's search market share has grown from 8.4% to 10.3%.
Things are starting to get interesting -- but this is only the beginning of the beginning.