Bing's initial popularity among Internet searchers seems to be sticking past launch—at least it has so far. Microsoft's recently relaunched search engine has actually gained another percentage point in the market share wars this July, according to Web metrics firm StatCounter. The firm noted that Bing was making "slow but steady" progress, and that Microsoft's deal with Yahoo would likely only result in good things for Bing's share of the search market.

StatCounter says that Bing climbed to 9.41 percent of the search market last month, compared to 8.23 percent in June. Combined with Yahoo's current share of the market (10.95 percent), the two come out with 20.36 percent—still a distant second to Google's 77.54 percent, but a relatively large slice of the pie nonetheless.

We are combining Yahoo's and Microsoft's share, of course, because the two announced a deal last week that would make Bing the search engine for all of Yahoo's sites. In exchange for such prominent placement, Microsoft also gained a 10-year license to Yahoo's core search technologies so that it can integrate whatever's left of Yahoo's search mojo into Bing. (As pointed out by All Things Digital, Yahoo had 20 percent share all by itself a year ago, but has deflated to half of its former glory since then.)

Bing's growth since its makeover from Live Search is nothing to scoff at, though. Though the search engine's share peaked at 9.21 percent during its first week, it settled down into the high 7s for a while before going back up to 8.45 percent during the last week of June. The mere fact that the number has grown a full percentage point since then shows that users are really giving Bing a chance—much more than they did for Live Search, anyway—and the underlying trend is positive.

Google remains the king of search for the time being, but according to StatCounter's numbers, its numbers are being slowly chipped away. Google dropped from 78.48 percent in June to 77.54 percent in July, but it still owns more than three-quarters of the market; a commanding lead to be sure. Chipping away will be slow going, but Google can no longer take its search superiority for granted.