Microsoft has been heavily marketing Bing in hopes of reviving their search engine. Based on recent search volume reports from Hitwise, Microsoft’s efforts have been meet with moderate success helping to increase Bing’s share of the U.S. search market to 9.5% in August from 8% in the prior month, as Google and Yahoo saw their respective search volume shares weaken.

If we look at charts of search market share before Microsoft unveiled Bing in May we can see that Google was controlling a dominant portion of searches accounting for nearly 73% of all searches. Since the launch of Bing, Google has fallen slightly to 70.46% as of September.

Yahoo has remained fairly steady while the small player ask.com has seen its market share cut in half, they now account for a slim 2.5% of searches.

For small businesses and search marketers this is just a small reminder to not ignore smaller search engines Bing and Yahoo in your search optimization efforts.

Bing and Yahoo both have loyal followings so it is important for site owners and marketers to not ignore theses search engines. Make sure Yahoo and Bing index your site if it is not be sure to submit your site to the search feature as well as the local listing center. A favorable ranking on theses sites can still deliver steady targeted traffic

If Bing the “Decision Engine” campaign takes off we could see continual growth in search volume performed on this search engine. Bing’s search algorithm is not as good as Google’s in my opinion when it comes to providing relevant results but I am sure they are continually improving this issue and with their cool new UI they cold see growth as consumers give Bing a try. Keep your eye on the horizon as Yahoo and Bing push for a modest level of parity in the market place.