Microsoft's Bing search engine overtook Yahoo! for the first time worldwide in January and increased its lead in February.

Web analytics company, StatCounter said that globally Bing reached 4.37 per cent in February ahead of Yahoo! At 3.93 per cent. Both trail far behind Google's 89.94 per cent of the global search engine market.

In the United States Yahoo! At 9.74 per cent still retains its lead over Bing at 9.03 per cent. Google's share in the US is 79.63 per cent. In July 2009 Microsoft announced an agreement whereby Bing would power the Yahoo! search technology. This has been implemented in the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Mexico.

Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter said that it was significant that Bing overtook Yahoo! globally for the first time on a monthly basis but it remains a tough battle to claw back Google's market share. Google dipped below the 90 per cent mark in February worldwide for the first time since August 2009 it shows little sign of losing its global dominance any time soon, he said.

StatCounter, which specialises in website visitor analysis for organisations and bloggers, provides free lifetime stats and free detailed analysis on the latest 500 hits. Members can upgrade to access more detailed stats from $5 a month. StatCounter Global Stats are based on aggregate data collected on a sample of over 15 billion page views per month from across the StatCounter network of more than three million websites.