Microsoft's Search Share Continues To DeclineMicrosoft's Search Share Continues To Decline

Other than a slight jump last summer during a Microsoft contest called Live Search Club, Microsoft's share of Internet searches in the United States has been consistently flat or declining over the last three years. That trend continued in February, as it lost another 0.2% of searches as compared to total search pie, according to comScore.

There have been repeated shake-ups of Microsoft's search strategy in the last few years, with the company first moving from MSN Search to Live Search, and then creating an entirely new organization for search and advertising, run by Microsoft senior VP Satya Nadella.

Last September, the company held an event called Searchification to unveil an entirely re-architected version of its search engine. Live Search 2.0 was supposed to provide more relevant query results and an easier-to-use interface. But these moves have meant little in terms of Microsoft's success in making inroads against Google.

Live Search Club, in which consumers used Microsoft's Live Search as a game to win prizes, briefly helped push Microsoft's share as measured by Compete up almost 5% in one month last spring. But controversy arose when Microsoft announced that some people had been gaming the system with automated bots.

Microsoft actually had fewer search queries overall in February than it did in January, part of an overall decrease in the number of searches across the board. Microsoft had 953 million searches, according to comScore. That compares to 5.86 billion for Google and 2.14 billion for Yahoo.

Microsoft executives have made clear that part of the reason they want to spend billions to acquire Yahoo is to gain a better foothold against Google in search and advertising. Still, combining the total number of searches done across both Yahoo and Microsoft sites last month only adds up to 53% of the searches done on Google in the same time frame.

"When it comes to the core algorithmic relevance, we have matured to a point where we can compete with the Googles of the world," Nadella told information last summer. "We need to get to the point where the ability to get that word out broadly gives us the shot. Now our challenge is to make sure people are more engaged with us." That challenge remains.