Bing keeps rising in the United States

For the second month in a row — and the second month since its release — the company’s new search engine, Bing, has increased its usage and market share in the United States.

According to comScore, Bing accounted for 8.9 percent of search queries in the United States in July, up from 8.4 percent in June and 8 percent in May. The July gains appear to have come at the expense of both Google and Yahoo, which each saw their market share decline by .3 percent, to 64.7 percent and 19.3 percent.

For Microsoft, the results are no doubt encouraging. But it is still not clear whether the initial lift for Bing, which is backed by a massive marketing campaign, will extend into the future.

“Although Bing took a bit of share from both Google and Yahoo, we are reluctant to extrapolate this into meaningful long-term share gains,” wrote Benjamin Schachter, an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech, in a note to investors. Schachter noted that despite its slight drop in July, Google still had its second highest share of monthly queries ever.
In a note to investors, Christa Quarles, an analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners, repeated a cautionary statement from a month earlier: “While the data indicates a very modest near-term bounce, we will be watching closely to see if any query pickup is sustainable,” she said.

For Microsoft, which is poised to take over search at Yahoo, a loss of share at Yahoo is hardly good news. ComScore is now reporting combined results for Yahoo and Bing: they inched up very modestly to 28.2 percent, up from 28 percent in June.

The comScore results have been made available to analysts and other clients of the firm. They are expected to be distributed publicly on Tuesday.