Following three consecutive months of gains, Bing broke through the 7% barrier to take a 7.16% slice of the UK search market for February.
The figures, obtained from StatCounter Global Stats, showed that this latest gain had largely been at the expense of Google, which dipped 0.21% to a still commanding 87.97% of the market. Despite comfortably retaining the lion’s share of the market, Google will doubtless be hoping to halt Bing’s run of successes during March.
Yahoo remained steady at 3.79%.
Google’s strong grip on the UK’s mobile search market remains untroubled on 93.6%, with Bing failing to make much headway in this area on 1.43%. Yahoo is sandwiched between the two on 4.75%.
February search news
During February, Google updated its Knowledge Graph algorithm to start providing more detailed answers to health-related queries, but was at pains to add that users should not take this to be a substitute for medical advice.
The search engine also announced it is to start warning users if a site’s loading time is a little on the sluggish side, placing a ‘slow’ label on search results to help people make a more informed decision about which site to visit.
There was some discussion around the fact that Google does not appear to have rolled out a Panda update in over four months. Naturally, Google updates (or lack thereof) are a constant source of speculation, and it’s important to keep employing the correct long term strategy to maintain visibility.
February search trends
February’s Google search trends were rooted firmly in the world of entertainment, with a number of high profile events clearly capturing the interest of the UK public.
The most popular search centred around health updates on Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina, who was found unconscious in a bath tub at the end of January and remains in a coma.
Other popular topics included the much-hyped TV prequel Better Call Saul, pop star Madonna’s dramatic fall at the Brit Awards, the conclusion to the ‘Who killed Lucy Beale?’ storyline on EastEnders and 50 Shades of Grey star Jamie Dornan.
Dornan was the only actor to appear in the top 10 web searches (as well as proving a popular image search), perhaps surprising when we consider that the Oscars (itself a popular search term) occurred during February. Not one of the winners in the film, director and acting categories featured in the top 10.
Seasonal searches included pancake day recipes and Valentines Day.
The UK market share stats for February have been outlined below:
| UK Search Engine | February 2015 share (%) | January 2015 share (%) | Change |
| 87.97 | 88.22 | -0.25 | |
| Bing | 7.16 | 6.95 | 0.21 |
| Yahoo | 3.79 | 3.78 | 0.01 |
| Others | 1.08 | 1.05 | 0.03 |