Last month, Bing employees got a present of sorts, only this wasn’t the type of thing a person can stuff under a tree or into an envelope.  New data from Experian Hitwise instead indicates that Bing’s share of the search market rose by five percent between November and December.

That’s significant on its own, considering how well and how long Google’s dominated the field.  As an added bonus: Yahoo’s share of the search market stayed rock-steady, meaning the Bing-Yahoo team increased its standing as a whole.

Also – while this is more speculative – it may be necessary to consider that December is a month when many people have time off.  So folks could have been showing a personal preference for Bing, even if they previously used another search engine while at school or work.

Anyway, to move onto a different subject, Experian Hitwise said in a statement, "Bing and Yahoo! Search achieved the highest success rates in December 2010, meaning that for both search engines, 81 percent of searches executed resulted in a visit to a Website.  Google achieved a success rate of 65 percent, up 1 percent over the previous month."

It looks like Google has some work to do if it intends to keep Bing from increasing its market share even more.