What does that mean? Well, it simply means that the reporting of results of what the market share is for the Microsoft search offering is going to be all over the map and one wonders what the real performance is after all is said and done.

Very early this month StatCounter got some press reported that bing had slipped considerably in September of 09 (12 percent to be exact). This report was met with some valid skepticism since the StatCounter folks seem to be setting themselves up as the early reporters of search engine share. While they certainly are first to line with information its the whole accuracy thing that has many folks a little suspect of what is going on there. Even Hitwise reported a 5% drop in bings numbers in September.

In stark contrast to the StatCounter and Hitwise numbers is the report from comScore yesterday which paints a different picture. TechCrunch tells us

Tonight it released its qSearch market share numbers, which are widely followed on Wall Street, and they show no decline for Bing in September. According to comScore, Bings U.S. search market share remained steady at 9.4 percent in September, up from 9.3 percent in August. That is not blowing the doors off of anything, but it is at least holding its own.

Meanwhile, Googles share went up 0.3 point from August, to 64.9 percent share. The biggest loser was Yahoo, which was down 0.5 percent in absolute terms to 18.8 percent share. Since the beginning of the year, Yahoo is down 2.2 percentage points in share, while Google is up 1.9 percent and Bing/Microsoft is up 0.9 percentage point.

We do this dance every month and quite honestly its starting to border on lame. It becomes even worse when there is a competition developing for first to market information rather than accurate information. The only number that would even make me blink is if Googles numbers went in the crapper.

Now that I said that will there be a report on November 1st saying that Google dips in October? While I am not that influential, nothing would surprise me. What weight do you place on this data as an Internet marketer? Does it influence you in any way? Tell us whether this stuff is important or becoming a bit of a joke.

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