Bing has helped Microsoft to modestly increase its search market share by 1 percent in the U.S. according to an analysis for June conducted by measurement firm StatCounter.

Microsoft had 8.23 percent market share in June, behind Yahoo at 11.04 percent according to the analysis. Unsurprisingly Google still dominates the U.S. market but has fallen back slightly from 79.07 percent in April to 78.48 percent in June.

Microsoft U.S. market share has gone from 7.21 percent in April to 8.23 percent in June.

“At first sight, a 1% increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive,” said Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Steady if not spectacular might be the best way to describe performance to date.”

Looking at weekly trends for June, Microsoft (Bing, Live Search and MSN Search in total) had peaked post launch at 9.21 percent in week 1st – 7th June. But after falling away in the following two weeks it has made a comeback in the last week in June to 8.45 percent.

Microsoft market share, May/June - US
18th to 24th May: 7.41%
25th to 31st May: 9.11%
1st to 7th June: 9.21%
8th to 14th June: 7.47%
14th to 21st June: 7.6%
22nd to 28th June: 8.45%

Overall, Bing is a big improvement over Microsoft’s Live Search. The company has done a good job initially promoting Bing, but a $100 million in marketing tends to help such efforts.

Bing is unlikely to be a “Google killer” but it is showing it has the potential to compete in search at least initially. The long term results for Bing will be the real test, until then you can still expect to see Google remain the dominate search engine.

People are exposed to a variety of types of ads on a daily basis from television ads to online ads and more than half (55%) of Americans say they find current advertising to be interesting while 41 percent say it is not interesting, according to a new survey by Harris Interactive.

Younger adults and those with higher incomes are more likely to consider ads interesting. Sixty-six percent of adults aged 18-34 and 60 percent of adults aged 35-44 think ads are interesting as do 62 percent of Americans with a household income of $75,000 or more.

The opposite is true of adults 55 and older with 52 percent saying that current advertising is not interesting and 46 percent of those aged 45-54 and those who have a household income between $35,000 and $74, 999.

When buying products and/or services, over half of Americans (54%) say advertisements they had seen or heard were not influential when then made their last large purchase, with one-quarter (25%) saying they were not at all influential. One-third (35%) of Americans say the ads they saw or heard were influential.

The United States continues to be the leader in spam, relaying 15 percent of the world’s spam messages, according to a recent report from Sophos that examines the top 12 spamming countries.

The United Kingdom has disappeared from the “Dirty Dozen” for the first time in two years, coming in at 14^th overall, and sending 2.1 percent of the globe’s spam.

Brazil has seen the biggest increase in spam, jumping from fourth to second place since last quarter. The country is now the source of 10.2 percent of spam emails, compared to 4.3 percent during the same period last year.

The top 12 spam relaying countries for January to March 2009 are as follows:

1. United States 15.8%
2. Brazil 10.2%
3. China (incl Hong Kong) 7.7%
4. India 5.1%
5. Turkey 4.1%
6. South Korea 3.8%
6. Russia 3.8%
8. Spain 3.0%
9. Argentina 2.8%
10. Poland 2.6%
10. Colombia 2.6%
12. Italy 2.3%

“The U.S. has gone some way towards reducing levels of spam since last quarter, when the country relayed almost a fifth of all the spam messages,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“What’s less encouraging is that Brazil has shot up the ranks. It’s no secret that the country has long been associated with cybercrime – in particular the spread of banking Trojans – however, a surge like this could also be a by-product of China’s slip down the charts. In any case, it’s certainly a trend to keep a close eye on.”

Spam accounts for 97 percent of all email received by business email servers, putting both a strain on resources and wasting a huge amount of time to lost productivity.

“Of course, the real cause of the spam problem is that not everyone will automatically delete these emails on sight,” continued Cluley.

“People out there must be buying products from spam, after all - the criminals behind the botnets would soon give up if they weren’t making any money out of it. Computer users should know by now that buying from spam is contributing to the problem, as well as putting their personal information into the hands of criminals – everyone should pledge to never ever buy via spam.”

Microsoft has previewed its new search engine called Bing, formerly known as Kumo and is set to launch it on Wednesday June 3.

Microsoft calls Bing a “Decision Engine” that initially will focus on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business.

Microsoft says it developed Bing as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the “information overload” that has come to characterize many of today’s search experiences.

A comScore study focused on search engines found that as many as 30 percent of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result. The study also found that about two-thirds of the remaining searches required a refinement or requery on the search results page.

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO.

“When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”

The number of online adults who have used online classified ads has more than doubled in the past four years, according to a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Almost half (49%) of internet users say they have used online classified sites, compared with 22 percent of online adults who had done so in 2005.

On any given day about 9 percent of Internet users visit online classified sites, up from 4 percent in 2005.

Craigslist is by far the most used online classified website in the United States. In March 2009, classified sites averaged 53.8 million visitors, up from 7 percent in February. Craigslist had 42.2 million unique visitors in the month of March.

Craigslist has launched in over 500 cities in 50 different countries since April 2009.

Online retail sales in the U.S. may have reached the bottom for 2009, but a return to double-digit growth of previous years is unlikely with the current economy, according to comScore.

In a Webinar about the online economy in the first quarter of this year, comScore compared zero growth with a 3 percent drop in the holiday fourth quarter.

“Although online retail spending growth was flat in the first quarter, this does represent a slight improvement over the disappointing fourth quarter,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

“These results would appear to indicate that the economy is finally exhibiting some signs of stability, and with consumer confidence beginning to improve, I’m optimistic that the online channel is poised for a return to positive growth in the second half of 2009.”

Concerns over unemployment, consumers continuing to save and slightly higher gas prices are still slowing online retail sales, which continue to do better than traditional retail stores.

Understandably, job security was the main economic concern named by respondents from all income levels, with mid-to low-income earners equally worried about prices.

Still, flat online retail sales performed better than an 8 percent decrease in first quarter retail sales.

“Clearly, ecommerce is picking up market share,” Fulgoni said. “If (retailers) can focus on ecommerce, that’s where the dollars seem to be shifting in retail.”

Sears Holdings has announced the launch of social networking sites MySears and MyKmart.

MySears and MyKmart allow users to share their insights, experiences and product reviews by creating a dialogue between the retailers and their customers through discussion forums, blog entries, ratings, reviews, polls and surveys.

Users can create a profile, upload photos, share experiences and connect with others. Users help Sears and Kmart as well as fellow customers by writing product reviews, participating in discussions and contributing ideas.

An “Ideas” feature allows users to contribute recommendations, which are then commented on by other members and considered for implementation by Sears Holdings’ management. Nearly all content on MySears and MyKmart will be written by customers.

“The MySears and MyKmart social networking communities offer customers a highly-versatile venue to connect with other like-minded individuals and get informed advice on their purchases,” said Rob Harles, vice president, Community, Sears Holdings.

“In addition, it gives them the platform to have their voices heard and help us make vital improvements to our stores and services.”

As reports of the swine flu outbreak reached beyond Mexican borders and into the U.S. late last week, the Internet has been buzzing at a high level about risks, symptoms and other updates for information

The volume of conversations about the epidemic is already nearly ten times those surrounding the salmonella and peanut butter scares from earlier this winter.

The increased conversations around swine flu on Twitter, where swine flu found its way into nearly 2 percent of all tweets, are indicative of the spike in conversations around the Web.

As updates emerge hourly (the swine flu Wikipedia page was updated 60 times between 10am and 11am) response to the spread of the virus, the Centers For Disease control acted quickly, updating their homepage and creating a special section solely for updates and information on swine flu that includes key facts, related items and the ability to share/post the page to social bookmarking and social networking sites.

Buzz activity about the CDC mirrors closely the buzz surrounding both health scares.