Bing steals Google market share, but it’s petty theft
Search engine statistics for the whole of June give the clearest indication yet that Bing is helping Microsoft increase its position in the U.S. search market. But it’s barely a dent in Google’s dominance, and isn’t translating internationally.
During June, Microsoft had an 8.23 percent share in the U.S., compared with 7.86 percent in May when the figures were a combination of MSN Search and Live Search. The figure still puts Microsoft behind Yahoo on 11.04 percent and Google on 78.48 percent.
Although it’s pretty much a statistically irrelevant change, Microsoft staff at least will be pleased to find Google’s figures dropped a sliver from 79.07 per cent. Betanews notes that even if Microsoft somehow managed to continue taking market share at this rate month after month, it would take nine years before it overtook Google.
The figures come from Statcounter and are based on around three million Web pages from sites which use its traffic analysis services. The measurements are based on visits to these pages from search engines, so technically they represent the share of results which people follow rather than the queries they make (which is what’s important to advertisers.)
It’s also possible that a search engine producing poor quality results might show up better in these statistics as users could need to follow more search results to find the information they are looking for.
The other good news for Microsoft is that week-to-week figures show that after an almost inevitable drop in its second week (when people were less likely to try Bing as a novelty), it began rising towards the end of the month.
Bing’s U.S. gains aren’t reflected worldwide, however. Statcounter lists its share of international searches during June at just 3.36 percent. One possible explanation is that one of Bing’s key features, search result filters which are customized to the particular subject being searched for, are not yet available in all countries.
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July 1st, 2009
Microsoft is lagging far behind other IT companies when it comes to helping save the environment. It ranks at the bottom of Greenpeace’s Cool IT Challenge, which scores how much IT companies are doing to address climate change. IT companies can help cut global greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 15 percent by 2020. Greenpeace’s Challenge uses scorecards to evaluate a dozen major IT companies in five areas: Public Climate Speech, Political Advocacy, Climate Solutions, Reducing Companies’ Own Emissions Target, and Renewable Energy Use. In addition to producing the technology necessary for the implementation of climate solutions and reducing their company’s carbon footprint, the leaders of these powerful companies can use their influence to impact key political leaders and call for a strong agreement at the Climate Change Negotiations in Copenhagen this December. Greenpeace will update Cool IT regularly and release the next assessment in August/September. To find out more about Cool IT and learn about who is winning the Challenge, visit http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/green-guide-12.
July 2nd, 2009
I think The June results in search share reflect the initial wave of marketing and buzz that came with the launching of Bing. It’s definitely a positive thing to see increase in those numbers not to mention the slight Google decrease, but the numbers that really will show what effect Microsoft is having will come when the buzz dies down a bit and people get over this test phase.
It’s entirely possible that people will like what they are seeing and make the switch and those people can refer friends and/or new search users. But as of July, nobody truly knows.
I think everyone, including the folks at Microsoft understand that if they are going to dig in Google’s share, they will have to make serious innovations before Google can make their own.
I’d also like to say that for those interested in trying different searches, check out http://www.eZanga.com for an efficient meta-search experience that is gaining popularity and improving all the time.