Some of this new interest in Microsoft's search engine was definitely driven by curiosity, but unlike other (failed) entries into the search engine market like Cuil, Bing actually delivers as a search engine, which should help Microsoft to retain a good chunk of these users. Of course, Microsoft's $80 million advertising blitz is definitely helping Bing as well, and based on our own experience, it is clear that Bing's marketing and PR campaign is reaching a lot of non-geeks and late adopters who would not typically go out of their way to try a new search engine.

We have to say, though, that our own stats don't corroborate StatCounter's findings. In our own analytics, Bing is barely visible, with Yahoo bringing us at least three times as many visitors. We are, however, not surprised to hear that a lot of users are checking Bing out right now.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Search Engine Market Share

Does Microsoft Still Need Yahoo Search?

If these stats hold up over the next few weeks, it will be interesting to see if we will still hear any chatter about Microsoft acquiring Yahoo's search assets in order to become a bigger player in the search engine market. Today, a combined Yahoo and Microsoft search engine could control almost 25% of the market. In an interview with PC Magazine this morning, Yahoo's CEO, Carol Bartz, argued that Yahoo was not under any pressure to make a deal with Microsoft, and that she thinks that any lift that Microsoft is seeing in the search market right now would only be temporary.