In the United States, things are looking up for Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, which was unveiled in May.
Web analytics firm StatCounter released analysis Monday stating that Bing slightly increased Microsoft's share of the U.S. search market in July. It now claims 9.41 percent, up from 8.23 percent in June.
The combined market share of both Microsoft and Yahoo in July was 20.36 percent, up slightly from 19.27 percent in June. The commanding lead Google currently has on the market shrank slightly to 77.54 percent in July from 78.48 percent in June.
Microsoft and Yahoo reached a deal last week, with Microsoft powering Yahoo search while Yahoo becomes the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers.
And according to StatCounter analysis, worldwide is the place where the two companies face an even bigger challenge in the search market. In July, Microsoft and Yahoo combined had just 8.77 percent of the global search market, down from 8.45 percent in June. On the other hand, Google still dominates the search market globally with 89.23 percent in July (slightly down from 89.8 percent in June).
StatCounter's data was based on an analysis of 1 billion search engine referring clicks (of which 258 million were from the United States) that were collected in June and July from the company's network of more than 3 million Web sites.
This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.
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