ReadWriteWeb

Since the launch of Bing, watching the developments in the search engine market is finally interesting again. According to the latest data from Compete for July, Bing continues to grow slowly but surely. At the same time, though, Compete notes that Bing has not been able to convert its growing search share into a rise in paid clicks on ads on the site. In July, Bing's sponsored click rate fell slightly to 5.5%, even though in June, it still saw an impressive growth in paid clicks.

According to the latest data from Hitwise, paid search traffic has taken a major hit in the last year. While, according to Hitwise, about 9.84% of the search engine traffic it registered in April 2008 came from paid clicks, in the four weeks preceding May 9, 2009, this number declined by 26% to 7.25%. Hitwise registered this trend across all of the categories it tracks, with the sole exception of paid traffic to site in its education category, where paid search results increased slights from 1.39% to 1.45%.