In February, Bing accounted for 11.5% of the U.S. search market, according to comScore, up from 8% last May. Microsoft's success has largely come at Yahoo's expense: Yahoo fell down to an all-time low of 16.8% of the search market in February, down from 20.1% last May.
So, how is Microsoft doing it? In part, no doubt, by growing organically via a better search product. In particular, people seem to like Bing's shopping, travel, and maps products more than they used to.
But Microsoft is also employing a bunch of paid and non-paid measures to get people to make Bing searches that they may not have ordinarily made. These including buying up toolbar deals, advertising, and building Bing search queries into other products, such as the wildly popular MSN.com homepage.
Are we missing anything? Let us know in comments and we'll add to the list.
Click here to see 10 ways Microsoft is juicing Bing's search traffic and market share →
Organic search traffic growth is arguably most important: Making a more interesting, more pleasant search engine than Live or MSN search were
Installing Bing toolbars on PCs through companies like HP has been a big driver for Bing
Building Bing searches into word games at ClubBing.com, giving people prizes and other incentives to play games, which generate Bing searches
Flooding the popular MSN portal with links to Bing search queries is a big driver
If you click in the MSN homepage's "Popular Searches" box, for instance, it takes you to a Bing search results page
Clicking on one of the links on the MSN homepage's "Trend Watch" takes you to a Bing search results page of Twitter searches
Clicking on one of the Local Events links on the MSN homepage takes you to a Bing event search results page
Clicking one of the Shopping links on the MSN homepage takes you to a Bing shopping search page
Bing Cashback also gives people an incentive to do their shopping searches at Bing: A few percent cash back on purchases
Microsoft has been advertising Bing on TV, as part of an ad campaign estimated up to $100 million. Bing ads will start airing in the U.K. next.
It's also advertising on mobile apps, including Apple's iPhone
And it's advertising on social networks, in places like Farmville
Making mobile apps, including this one for the iPhone
Throwing parties, hoping people will remember to use Bing to research hangover cures the morning after too many "Bingtinis"
Photo from the Bing party at last year's Web 2.0 Summit. More pics here →
