Going by the most recent Internet search figures compiled by online metrics firm StatCounter, the US market share of Microsoft Bing dropped to 8.47 percent in September - marking a 1.17 percent fall from its 9.64 percent share in August.

Interestingly, the market share that Bing lost went the way of its bigger rival and Internet search leader by far - Google! The biggie saw its US market share rising from 77.83 percent in August to an even more enviable 80.12 percent in September - the figures being higher than its 78.72 market share before the release of Bing in early June.

Riding on a consistent wave of excitement - though not a phenomenal growth by any standards, as compared to Google - Bing saw its share climb from 8.13 percent in June, to 9.41 percent in July, and 9.64 percent in August - before the dip in September!

The plunge in Bing is rather surprising, given its steadily climbing performance ever since its debut; and the interesting features that it has been adding, like Bing Visual Search, Bing and Ping shared search, and indexed Twitter tweets.

Meanwhile, to maintain its dominant position in the search market, Google has, October 1 onwards, announced a gradual expansion of its Search Options. It would now enable users to search results by past hour, specific date range, shopping sites, visited / not yet visited pages, books, blogs and news.