More searchers using Microsoft's Bing

Search engine Bing's US market share rose to 12.7 per cent in June, a 0.6 per cent increase for its owner Microsoft in just one month.

According to figures from comScore, over 16.4 billion searches were made in the US last month, up 3 per cent from May 2010.

Bing is still a way off market leader Google - which has a 62 per cent share - with Yahoo owning nearly 19 per cent. Yet the growth is seen in the industry as a significant achievement for the newest search engine on the market.

A spokesman for search engine experts ClickQuery.com said: "When you think about web search there's one big player and that's Google. For years, Google has held sway over the market without much competition but this could all be about to change."

"Microsoft has invested a significant amount of money into positioning Bing as a recognised search engine and will continue to do so. In a bid to offer web users a service that goes beyond that of Google and other rivals, Bing has had to push innovation to its limits and, in turn, Google needs to do its bit to stay one step ahead," he continued.

However, on a global scale, the figures are slightly different. NetApplications found that Google currently has over 85 per cent of the global search engine market.

Yahoo has 6 per cent and Bing sits in third still with just over 3 per cent. This is still a rise from December 2009 in which Bing was fourth behind Baidu and was only used in 1.88 per cent of searches.

Last month Bing launched itself as an 'entertainment hub' offering music, film, TV and gaming fans a host of new features.

Bing's mobile and global outreach is being attributed to this rise in both the US and worldwide markets.

Over 4.3 million iPhone owners have downloaded the Bing widget since the start of the year in America and Bing launced its full version of the search engine in Japan on Wednesday.