Bing Climbs Search Engine Ladder

[Adamvv]

Read an interesting article on eweek.com

As per the article:

"Microsoft's Bing search engine commanded almost 11.7 percent of U.S. searches in March, up from 11.5 percent share in February, comScore said. Google's search share slipped to 65.1 percent through March from 65.5 percent in February. Yahoo stopped the bleeding a bit, notching 16.89 percent of searches in March, up slightly from 16.81 in February. Since Microsoft rolled out Bing in June 2009, the service has gradually tacked on 3.7 percent market share gain, gaining more share than Yahoo has lost."

Although Bing seems to be climbing the ladder of Search Engine preference, Google's reign as top search engine remains strong and intact. Yahoo on the other hand....

[rod.collins]

Read an interesting article on eweek.com

As per the article:

"Microsoft's Bing search engine commanded almost 11.7 percent of U.S. searches in March, up from 11.5 percent share in February, comScore said. Google's search share slipped to 65.1 percent through March from 65.5 percent in February. Yahoo stopped the bleeding a bit, notching 16.89 percent of searches in March, up slightly from 16.81 in February. Since Microsoft rolled out Bing in June 2009, the service has gradually tacked on 3.7 percent market share gain, gaining more share than Yahoo has lost."

Although Bing seems to be climbing the ladder of Search Engine preference, Google's reign as top search engine remains strong and intact. Yahoo on the other hand....

This news is always very positive, especially for many who rank better in Yahoo and Bing than in Google. I noticed a decent ranking on one of my sites after only having it up for a little over 13 months where with Google it has been a couple of years and is slowly moving up the ranks.

Rod

[Erica]

On an interesting side note, I have noticed that Bing has been doing a lot of product placement marketing on tv shows.

I wonder if this is working well for them?

[Professor]

Good catch Adam. It would be nice to see Bing and Yahoo gain a bit more market share so we dont have all our eggs in the Google basket.

[bbonline]

Bing is slowly becoming more and more competitive these days. Many still say that Google can't be defeated, but with these progresses from Bing, there can be a chance. Let's see what will happen in the long run.

[Adamvv]

Bing is slowly becoming more and more competitive these days. Many still say that Google can't be defeated, but with these progresses from Bing, there can be a chance. Let's see what will happen in the long run.

I agree. Bing seems to be making a solid push for second place right now and if they can introduce a few more added-value features like their visual search, I can see them becoming a major player for search engine dominance.

Unfortunately, I think Yahoo's days are numbered. Once the dominant search engine, Yahoo has not maintained their status as a top pick and I just don't see them investing the resources to give it another go.

[MichaelCorfman]

I've been working today on the presentationI'm giving tomorrow at the CAC conference, and so have been looking at how things have changed over the past few months.

Six months ago according to data I obtained through Hitwise in the US Google was the number one site in terms of visitors. It has now been now been overtaken by Facebook for the most visitors.

And back then Bing was not in the top ten sites, whereas today it sits at position number eight (if you count Yahoo as just one site).

Michael

[Adamvv]

Bing has indeed made leaps and bounds to get where they are today.

eMarketer offered some insight into the portal business as well..

eMarketer forecasts that in the US in 2010:

Over 57% of online ad spending will come through the top four portals.

Ad revenues at the top four mega sites will rise to over $13.5 billion.

Ad revenues at the four portals will rise by 3.7%—but with great diversity among them.

Yahoo! will get nearly $1.3 billion in display advertising revenues.

Google will get over $8.1 billion in paid search advertising revenues.

Average ad revenues per unique visitor will range from $8.33 to $52.50 at the top four sites.

[MarkJohn]

I wonder how much of Bing's progress has to do with:
a) Users can search the Web from Facebook using bing, so with more people accessing FB than Google, it's obvious that bing is going to be getting a larger piece of the search pie
b) Users who use Hotmail will most likely use bing as a search engine, as it places you there once you logout

and whatever other insipid methods they've been using. I would venture a guess that if we were to look at the numbers of people who searched directly at the source (i.e. bing.com, google.com, yahoo.com), the numbers would be quite different.

That said, it's a great way to get people to use your product, and I'm a fan of strategic alliances. It's just too bad that bing's product is so weak.

[bbonline]

I wonder how much of Bing's progress has to do with:
a) Users can search the Web from Facebook using bing, so with more people accessing FB than Google, it's obvious that bing is going to be getting a larger piece of the search pie
b) Users who use Hotmail will most likely use bing as a search engine, as it places you there once you logout

and whatever other insipid methods they've been using. I would venture a guess that if we were to look at the numbers of people who searched directly at the source (i.e. bing.com, google.com, yahoo.com), the numbers would be quite different.

That said, it's a great way to get people to use your product, and I'm a fan of strategic alliances. It's just too bad that bing's product is so weak.

Well actually, if you are still used to MSN.com, you can see the logo of Bing in the search box (it isn't surprising, for Bing is officially the replacement for MSN search). So even if you land to MSN.com after logging out of your hotmail account, you will still use Bing in doing some search (if you don't wish to visit other search engines than MSN).

[universal4]

Internet Explorer 8 (let alone Windows 7) will continue to increase the market share or at least make it more difficult for Google to hold on to the market share they currently have.

If Microsoft can make more improvements to their product both on the end-users side as well as make any improvements on the webmaster's side I could easily see Bing's marketshare picking up points steadily over the coming year.

Rick
Universal4

[Adamvv]

Internet Explorer 8 (let alone Windows 7) will continue to increase the market share or at least make it more difficult for Google to hold on to the market share they currently have.

If Microsoft can make more improvements to their product both on the end-users side as well as make any improvements on the webmaster's side I could easily see Bing's marketshare picking up points steadily over the coming year.

Rick
Universal4

I agree that it will take Microsoft some serious improvements over their current product for end-users to choose IE 7/8 over Firefox or another alternative like Chrome.

Like you said, it will take some time for this to develop and Bing could offer some stable competition to Google in the years to come, however for the present time and for the foreseeable future, Google remains an no-brainer choice for top spot.

[universal4]

OK, first of all, I personally think that IE is better than Firefox, and the improvements I spoke of has more to do with the search product and nothing to do with the browsers.

IE is the browser of choice for a higher percentage of pc users since they are normally concerned about browsing the internet and do not care what browser they use and in fact unless they are exposed to outside forces or peer pressure they would often never even try other browsers.

When I personally consider browser choices FF is much lower on my list of choices, but this thread is about search and not browsers.

I mentioned how IE was helping Bing gain marketshare since the latest updates to IE7 and the release of IE8 have embedded Bing Search directly into the browser more successfully. In fact registry hacks are needed to remove the search bar from the browser itself.

Microsoft has made it easier for users to easily switch between search choices, but I think overall most end-users go with whatever the default is and unless they are coached or install third party programs that change those defaults Microsoft will gain share by this alone.

Rick
Universal4

[Adamvv]

Although IE is the current browser of choice (mainly - like you said - because the vast majority of users don't bother looking for alternatives), "better" options do exist.

IE is improving, yes. But Safari is better at parsing a page, and Firefox renders the page nicer.

IE is faster to load, and since it is complimented by other Microsoft-owned products, it is improving quickly and works better with them. With Bing as the default search-engine, it is poised to ride the IE popularity wave.

[universal4]

The browser choices you make are your opinion only.

In my opinion,. I personally like IE better and think it does a better job. of parsing pages.

As far5 as speed goes, I think that Opera wins that hands down.

As far as search choices, I like both google and bing depending on what I am search for.

As an example, I think Bing returns better results for tech searches especially when I am more concerned about Technet and Microsoft Knowledge Base results.

If I am researching spyware and viruses I will likely use Google since it will return more results from forums and blogs, although it will likely have many more unrelated results to sift through.

In our niche (Online Gambling) Google certainly has a better reputation of returning more pertinent results (except for those that rank better in Bing then they do in Google).... lol

Whatever the opinion, I think that real competitiion between the two will force both of them to stay oin their toes in terms of spam reductions, relevant results, and constant improvements of tools and options for webmasters.

Rick
Universal4

[TravG]

I think google has lost sight of their core business. Sure they are still dominant in search because they are like kleenex. Its not a tissue its a klennex - its not search something its "google it".

Microsoft will do as they always do... take a great product or idea and make it make it better - hence BING. Bing will continue to gain share but only through advertising and changing mind sets. Bing probably is the best search engine available (well maybe not yet but will be) and as the google guys fly their 767's BING will continue to make a better search and eventually take them.

ummm, has anyone heard the i pad is being banned by college campases? Microsoft will get it right - give them 1 year.

[bbonline]

This is becoming more and more interesting! Microsoft had already emerged victorious in the browser wars in the last decades, and yet they are even improving IE to the extent that majority of computer users (that's right, majority because Windows is the most widely used OS) will never ask for more other than the default browser. And the popularity of the IE will even have direct effects on the use of Bing as the default search provider. I'm not that sure but, I've noticed when you run IE8 for the first time, you will be prompted by the browser to choose from the default or custom settings. Of course, I would choose custom settings to know what lies behind the IE8 settings, and in the "Choose the default search provider" part, the list is arranged alphabetically, therefore Ask.com will be on top. I think that if future releases of IE will make Bing on top of any search provider list and be emphasized, users will choose it more than the other when they choose the custom settings.

Speaking of the browser wars, today it is the Search Engine Wars. Bing is now increasing its prowess and is slowly becoming more and more of a threat to Google. Thus, if today we speak of "just google it" when we want to search for something, maybe in the future it would be "just bing it!". Yeah, Bing it on, I mean, Bring it on!

[rod.collins]

Speaking of the browser wars, today it is the Search Engine Wars. Bing is now increasing its prowess and is slowly becoming more and more of a threat to Google. Thus, if today we speak of "just google it" when we want to search for something, maybe in the future it would be "just bing it!". Yeah, Bing it on, I mean, Bring it on![/quote]

Markets change and it should be important to go with the trends, just like when Netscape was king and Hotbot and Lycos where big in the search market, now facebook and twitter rule, when in fact Myspace was very popular in the past.

I think just not putting all your eggs in one basket wether it be Bing, Yahoo, Google optimize for all as you never know when the trend will make a positive or even tragic change.

Rod

[Adamvv]

I think just not putting all your eggs in one basket wether it be Bing, Yahoo, Google optimize for all as you never know when the trend will make a positive or even tragic change.

Rod

That is exactly it. Spreading your resources across several search engines is much more effective. Just like most products out there, they have a specific lifetime. Not all will survive, and new and improved versions will emerge as time passes.