Don’t look now but the so called Bing gains in market share are not all they are made out to be.

ComScore released its June qSearch market share figures on Tuesday showing Bing making a modest 0.4 percent gain in search query volume against Google and Yahoo to 8.4 percent, compared to May, 2009, up from an  0.3 percent jump in search market share for Bing from May to June.

Those number are just not right. Microsoft is no doubt getting credit for a slew of search engine users that have watched in horror as Bing hijacked the Internet Explorer 6 toolbar. I am speaking from experience here. It has happened to me. And I have no clue how to fix it. I just know that now when I want to search it is just that much harder to get to Google and perform a simple search. So have I stopped using Google for search? No. Am I technically running Bing? Yes.

Check out the post titled “Bing Hijacks IE6 Toolbar, Google Users Upset” on Search Engine Roundtable or even a wave of  posts on BroadbandDSLreports.com. Some claim Microsoft has issued a fix that was pushed out to all infected browsers. If that is the case the the fix certainly didn't give me back control of my search engine toolbar.

I’m skeptical of any search engine shift share numbers. Given the funny business that has gone on with Internet Explorer 6 the question should be asked: Are the Bing market share gains real?

One sign that Microsoft will do anything and everything in its power to leverage its Windows and Vista operating system, Internet Explorer browser and Office franchises to make gains with Bing is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s comments this week from Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference.

Ballmer told Microsoft partners that Bing is "as good a demonstration of our tenacity and commitment as anything you've ever seen." Tenacity and commitment translates into any technical path that can be taken to get users to favor Bing versus Google.

"Our track record of having that tenacity turn into success has been quite high, and that's why many of you keep coming back," Ballmer told the more than 6,000 partners. "Because if we can't turn our great ideas and tenacity into success, then you'll go to someone else's partner conference."

Whose partner conference would that be? It certainly wouldn’t be Google’s since the search engine giant views the channel as nothing more than a blip on its screen with nary an investment in partner programs.

Microsoft would stand a lot better chance of gaining search engine market share if it had a search engine strategy that leveraged its thousands of solution provider partners. Even Google has recruited partners to sell its Search Engine appliances. What’s the Bing play for partners? Can you make money with Bing?