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Last week, StatCounter indicated that Bing had experienced its first bad month, losing market share between August and September.  Some people, perhaps understandably, had trouble accepting this.  But Hitwise has now provided its own figures, and they, too, show that Microsoft’s new offering hit a rough patch. 

Bing suffered a five percent month-over-month slip heading into September, according to Hitwise, which took it from a U.S. market share of 9.48 percent down to 8.96 percent.  That has to be distressing for Microsoft, since it might indicate that people have finished experimenting with the search engine.

What’s more, it appears that market leader Google already vacuumed up most or all of the loose searchers.  Google’s market share increased from 70.24 percent to 71.08 percent between August and September, giving it a one percent gain.

Yahoo, meanwhile, imitated its would-be semi-owner, slipping three percent from a standing of 16.96 percent to 16.38 percent.

Then, surprisingly, Ask also merited mention, managing to increase its market share by eight percent from 2.37 percent to 2.56 percent.

September was an odd month in the search industry.  We’ll keep an eye out for October’s stats, which should help decide whether it represented a fluke or the start of some interesting new trends.

Related posts:

1. Google, Bing Make Small Gains
2. Nielsen Grants Bing Small Win Against Google
3. Bing And Ask Increase Search Share In January
4. Hitwise Puts Google Nearer To 75 Percent Market Share
5. Google, Bing Perform Well In Latest comScore Report
6. Bing Managed Big Gain In October
7. Google and Bing Increase Share of Enterprise Search Traffic
8. Hitwise: Facebook’s Social Market Share Up 194 Percent
9. Report Says Bing Sees First Monthly Decline
10. Bing Gains Ground In August
11. Bing And Yahoo See Small Decline In August
12. Bing Shopping Shows Impressive Growth Since Launch