Bing and Yahoo! Gang Up on Google

By Rick Aristotle Munarriz | More Articles
July 14, 2010 | Comments (4)

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"Los links!"

The latest ads for Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT ) Bing feature a Bing-using telenovela hero galloping in to save the stunning Filomena -- and in the next episode sexy maid Isabella -- from Juan Carlos, who is thwarted in his attempts to please the women by bland, link-laden search rivals. However, it's not just Filomena, Isabella, and Juan Carlos who are growing frustrated with "los links."

Internet traffic watcher comScore (Nasdaq: SCOR ) continues to be tripped up by contextual links on Bing and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO ) that are being counted as search query links.

This week's comScore report shows that Yahoo! and Microsoft continued to gain market share against Google (Nasdaq: GOOG ) , though largely as the result of clicks on Bing and Yahoo! for content-based links and graphical slide shows that comScore is counting as individual search queries.

It's a sham -- and comScore knows it. It promises a fix, and it better come soon. The company's credibility is at stake.

Let's take a look at comScore's numbers for June, including the results of IAC's (Nasdaq: IACI ) Ask.com and AOL (NYSE: AOL ) .

Company	June 10	May 10
Google	62.6%	63.7%
Yahoo!	18.9%	18.3%
Bing	12.7%	12.1%
Ask.com	3.6%	3.6%
AOL	2.2%	2.3%

Source: comScore.

The irony here is that apparently Yahoo! and Bing would have gained slivers of market share without the questionable stat-padding trickery. However, one can't read too much into this until a sustainable trend emerges without the contextual smoke and mirrors. Yes, comScore has reported that Google has been losing market share every month since February, but let's see what these numbers really look like once comScore puts the search back in search engine monitoring.

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Microsoft is a Motley Fool Inside Value choice. Google is a Motley Fool Rule Breakers selection. Motley Fool Options has recommended a diagonal call position on Microsoft. The Fool owns shares of Google. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services, free for 30 days.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is a huge fan of all portals and search engine. He does not own shares in any of the stocks in this story. Rick is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.

Read/Post Comments (4) | Recommend This Article (7)

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Report this Comment On July 14, 2010, at 11:33 AM, cruzit wrote:

Tried to comment on their blog about this and got this:
"Comment Submission Error
Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:
1"
They don't want to hear about it i guess.
Report this Comment On July 14, 2010, at 11:57 AM, uc22 wrote:

Have you written a positive article about MS in the last 6 months? Even when they do something good you imply they are cheating or someone must have messed up. Even if Bing gained 0.001 percent it is a gain. However, when Windows loses 0.01 share all of the media writes a "Death of Windows" article. I don't want fanboyism here but how about being objective when it comes to MS? It would help your cred trust me. Real techies don't hate MS nor do they pick sides between Apple, Google and MS. We simply like tech. If it stinks (live search) we tell you. If it is pretty good (Bing,) we tell you it is pretty good. If it is really good (Windows 7, IPhone) we tell you. Get the point? MS isn't the evil empire and neither is Apple or Google dispite their questionable but still legal privacy policy.
Report this Comment On July 14, 2010, at 4:51 PM, greenwave3 wrote:

Bing and Yahoo have nothing on Google. Watch out for a blowout earnings report tomorrow for GOOG.
Report this Comment On July 15, 2010, at 11:52 AM, plange01 wrote:

microsoft and yahoo's stockholders need to gang up on both ceo's and dump them!!these are two once top of the line tech companys that have completely fallen apart...

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