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Bing beats Yahoo in search market, Microsofties heard chanting “We’re number two!”

We jest, we jest. Microsofties don’t chant.

But we’re sure the company is mighty proud of today’s numbers released by comScore that show Bing’s market share has, for the first time ever, surpassed Yahoo’s search market share.

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For the month of November 2011, Yahoo grabbed 15.1 percent of the U.S. search market for home and work locations, while Bing took home 15 percent of that pie.

However, for the month of December 2011, comScore says Bing scraped ahead with 15.1 percent market share while Yahoo search dropped to 14.5 percent of the market.

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Of course, the big winner here is still Google, which took 65.4 percent of the U.S. home and work search market in November 2011 and actually grew to 65.9 percent the following month.

Numbers from other sources this time last year had Bing pegged as a much more formidable opponent in the search space. In Feburary 2011, Hitwise said that Bing had gained around 27 percent of the search market.

comScore stats from the summer of 2011 show Yahoo at 16.1 percent and Bing at 14.4 percent.

Yahoo web search has been powered by Bing since the two companies struck a 10-year deal to that effect back in 2009. In combining their powers, Microsoft and Yahoo hoped to wedge Google out of complete search dominance.

At that time, Google controlled 65.8 percent of the search market, again according to comScore — just nine tenths of a percent less than it claims today.

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In a word, Microsoft’s “win” over Yahoo today is but cold comfort, since their powerful partnership hasn’t managed to budge Google from its highly favorable position.

But with Google’s new inclusion of social results in its web search, change-averse users may run to the hills — or, as it were, to Bing. On the other hand, the change could prove extremely positive for Google. The more interesting numbers are still to come, so stay tuned in for more news of the search wars.

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