I'm having a hard time understanding the significance of this news given the Bing / Yahoo.com partnership (Bing started powering Yahoo.com search in late August). Going forward Bing's success will be measured in terms of its performance vis-a-vis Google, so what's the relevance that it overtook Yahoo in market share?
Most users aren't aware that Yahoo is powered by Bing, so the fact that Bing overtook Yahoo in search shows that Bing has gained (or Yahoo has lost) significant ground. This isn't searches powered by Bing, but searches actually on Bing.com.
That's good for BING, only 52% to go. (well, actually more like 26% to achieve parity).
I don't see how google can go up 1% / month and go up 1% / year at the same time.
Bing growing 30% per year and two percent per month means that they're already flattening out though.
In the article they note that since BING now powers Yahoo! search since August that BING actually has a marketshare that is roughly 26% instead of the 14% it has on its own domain.
Does anyone else think it's weird that we make up artificial goals for some company, so we feel like we can tell it what to do or make a comment?
Like here we're talking about the assumption that Bing wants to knock google out of search or something, rather than have a successful, competitive product. Who says that's their plan?
I agree: these numbers just don't add up. Where are the sites that get 35%+ of their search traffic from Bing to balance out the plethora of sites that get 85%+ of their traffic from Google? I haven't heard of any.
What's the breakdown on browser usage for visitors to your site?
Every site attracts a different demographic of visitors, so you'd expect the browser usage and search engine usage patterns to change accordingly. Younger and more technologically adept users tend to use firefox/chrome/safari more than average and tend to use google more than average, that might explain what you see with your site.
Hat's off to Microsoft on this one - they've earned it.
I don't use Bing for my day to day search but I've used their travel search and it's not too bad. It's definitely no Hipmunk, but it's clean, minimal and pretty snappy.
They've made some effort to take a dull product, make it useful, improve its design and differentiate it from the competition. Yeah, the logo is hideous and embarrassing. Yeah, they've also spent a lot of cash on the advertising.
In the end, though, they've expended more effort in making their search product worth using than Yahoo has recently. So bravo.
Meanwhile: Boy, has Yahoo just lost its fighting spirit or what? What are they doing over there? There's never any interesting news from their corner. Stuck in the mud. They don't even own their search results or PPC product anymore. It's a shame, they've got a good and trusted brand.
Yahoo, within the last five years especially, seemed to fall victim to the economics of the search engine space. That is, they failed to properly differentiate their product in any meaningful way and never once had a very strong focus on the experience of search. Web search just became too important and they were relegated to continually play catch-up while Microsoft crafted their strategy which, from this bit of news, seemed to have been fairly effective.
For sure. For a while there, I tried it as my default. I came back to Google for the long tails on my obscure coding error searches, but until the recent Google revamp, I would go back to Bing specifically for image searches.
Also, I still use Bing for certain, ahem, less savory searches. They have Google beat for that. I think they optimize for it, whereas Google has stated that they don't key on it either way.
Either way, shaking up the search landscape is a good thing for all of us even if you never touch Bing. Google has definitely been forced back to innovate their search UX since Bing has come out (Image search, Instant, reformatting the results screen, etc.). We all win in that scenario.
Bing has a tough battle especially because most people (including me) equate the notion of a comprehensive search result for a query to what Google produces for that query. That is expected considering we have used it for so long.
Bing is my default search engine because I'm paranoid about Google's tracking practices. In my experience, I still see cases where I do not find (all results, enough results, related results, etc) what I want on Bing and then I try Google and find it.
So, does Bing finally allow restricting your search results to specific period? The lack of this crucial feature was why I wouldn't even bother using it, and it still doesn't seem to be available (I just had a quick look out of curiosity).
[+] [-] mjfern|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Psyonic|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|15 years ago|reply
I don't see how google can go up 1% / month and go up 1% / year at the same time.
Bing growing 30% per year and two percent per month means that they're already flattening out though.
In the article they note that since BING now powers Yahoo! search since August that BING actually has a marketshare that is roughly 26% instead of the 14% it has on its own domain.
[+] [-] jonknee|15 years ago|reply
That would work if they hadn't grown in the previous 11 months. Unless I'm reading it wrong, which is always a possibility.
[+] [-] awakeasleep|15 years ago|reply
Like here we're talking about the assumption that Bing wants to knock google out of search or something, rather than have a successful, competitive product. Who says that's their plan?
I find myself doing this same thing.
[+] [-] chaosmachine|15 years ago|reply
Looking at traffic for a few of my own sites (mostly tech related, admittedly), Google is consistently in the 92-96% range.
[+] [-] jacquesm|15 years ago|reply
84% for google, 6% yahoo, 3% bing, 7% small fry, 1.8 M uniques / day on that site.
That's according to analytics ;)
[+] [-] Encosia|15 years ago|reply
However, on http://Encosia.com, Google is 97% and Bing/Yahoo are less than 3% combined.
It's all about the site's audience.
[+] [-] ratsbane|15 years ago|reply
Google: 90.7% Yahoo: 4.8% Bing: 3.0%
Same 30 days, one year ago:
Google: 91.96% Yahoo: 5.18% Bing: 1.8%
[+] [-] patio11|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olegkikin|15 years ago|reply
Yahoo: 5.45%
Bing: 2.60%
[+] [-] cletus|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|15 years ago|reply
Every site attracts a different demographic of visitors, so you'd expect the browser usage and search engine usage patterns to change accordingly. Younger and more technologically adept users tend to use firefox/chrome/safari more than average and tend to use google more than average, that might explain what you see with your site.
[+] [-] danilocampos|15 years ago|reply
I don't use Bing for my day to day search but I've used their travel search and it's not too bad. It's definitely no Hipmunk, but it's clean, minimal and pretty snappy.
They've made some effort to take a dull product, make it useful, improve its design and differentiate it from the competition. Yeah, the logo is hideous and embarrassing. Yeah, they've also spent a lot of cash on the advertising.
In the end, though, they've expended more effort in making their search product worth using than Yahoo has recently. So bravo.
Meanwhile: Boy, has Yahoo just lost its fighting spirit or what? What are they doing over there? There's never any interesting news from their corner. Stuck in the mud. They don't even own their search results or PPC product anymore. It's a shame, they've got a good and trusted brand.
[+] [-] brandonkm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NumberFiveAlive|15 years ago|reply
Also, I still use Bing for certain, ahem, less savory searches. They have Google beat for that. I think they optimize for it, whereas Google has stated that they don't key on it either way.
Either way, shaking up the search landscape is a good thing for all of us even if you never touch Bing. Google has definitely been forced back to innovate their search UX since Bing has come out (Image search, Instant, reformatting the results screen, etc.). We all win in that scenario.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] code_duck|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3mb3r|15 years ago|reply
Bing is my default search engine because I'm paranoid about Google's tracking practices. In my experience, I still see cases where I do not find (all results, enough results, related results, etc) what I want on Bing and then I try Google and find it.
They've done a decent job nevertheless.
[+] [-] il|15 years ago|reply
Aside from heavy branding, they also built an absolutely brilliant, perfectly executed long-tail SEM campaign.
According to my internal data, Bing is one of the largest advertisers on both Yahoo and Google, approaching eBay and Amazon in volume.
SEMRush shows 50,000 paid keywords for Bing- but that's a tiny fraction of their actual ad spend.
[+] [-] RJF|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muxxa|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redraga|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itistoday|15 years ago|reply