Google’s share of the search engine market in the UK has dropped below 90% for the first time in five years, according to a report from global information services company Experian Hitwise.
As per the October figures released by Experian, 89.33% of all web searches in the UK were made using Google, down 1.41%, compared to 90.74% searches in September 2012.
Experian said that as Google’s market share dropped, it was a positive month for Microsoft, Yahoo!, Ask and the all other search engines.
Microsoft Sites, led by the bing engine increased market share by 0.72% up to 4.71% of all searches.
Online searches for Windows 8, which was launched in October this year, increased by 120% throughout October showing the increased online interest for Microsoft’s new operating system.
Google still maintains a huge competitive edge over the other search engines in the UK market, Experian said.
According to Experian, there are 18 times more searches conducted on Google Sites than on all the other search engines combined.
Experian added that this is encouraging news for Microsoft as bing once again starts to gain some momentum and traction in the UK search market.
Forrester Research analyst Luca Paderni was quoted by BBC as saying that "In the UK, Bing has been using very aggressive tactics of promotion for last few months, in preparation for the Christmas season."
"But Google is still dominant, and we would need to see a trend over more months to call it a consistent decline," Paderni said.
