Bing Leapfrogs Yahoo As No. 2 U.S. Search Engine

Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing search engine has been rapidly rising in popularity since its launch in June of last year. In August, it overtook Yahoo (YHOO) as the No. 2 U.S. Internet search engine, after Google (GOOG), for the first time, according to a Nielson report Tuesday.

Bing accounted for 13.9% of August searches, compared to 13.1% for Yahoo, Nielsen said in the report. Google still accounted for about two-thirds of all U.S. searches.

The Microsoft-owned visual search engine appears to have taken market share from Yahoo since last year. Bing searches increased 30% in the past year while Yahoo searches were down 18%, Nielsen says.

Bing last month started powering some of Yahoo's searches as well. Combined with its own searches and the ones powered for Yahoo, Bing would've accounted for 26% of U.S. searches in August, according to the report.