Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, has done quite well out of the gate, gaining 3% market share in June 2009. And from this Mashable post we learn that analytics and research firm StatCounter reports the July results are showing the same trend: Bing is gaining traction, having gained 1.24% market share, up to 9.41%. In June, Bing’s increased market share came at the expense of Yahoo!, but in July it seems that 1% of the increase came at the expense of Google. According to StatCounter, Yahoo and Bing combined now control more than 20% of the search market, up from 19.27%, although comScore indicates that their combined market share in June was 29%, indicating disagreement over the actual numbers.

With this increased and growing market share, the fact that Yahoo! search will be taken over by Bing, and because Bing’s search algorithms differ from Google’s, SEOs will have to factor Microsoft/Bing into their approach to optimizing Web pages. The question is, How? Read the rest of this entry »