Bing Hot on Yahoo’s Heels

Nielsen published its February search market metrics this week and it’s more good news for Microsoft (MSFT). The company’s new Bing search engine saw its market share jump to 12.5 percent from 10.9 percent in January (see table below; click to enlarge).

That puts it within two percentage points of Yahoo (YHOO), whose share fell to 14.1 percent from 14.5 percent and, heh-heh, within 52.7 percentage points of Google (GOOG), which also saw a decline from January to February. The company ended the month with 65.2 percent share, down from 66.3 percent in January.

It’s slow going, but Bing is clearly whittling away at both Google and Yahoo’s search market share. Of course, the flip side is that with Yahoo in decline, the search side of the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership isn’t showing all that much growth.