Looking behind Bing’s market share figures
The headline story in the search engine world this week is that Bing is continuing to grow, now taking 11.5 percent of all U.S. searches. But it’s the factors behind this trend which tell a more illuminating story.
The most notable point is that it looks very likely that most of the Bing growth has come at the expense of Yahoo. While there appears to be a strong correlation between Yahoo’s share falling and Bing’s growing, the Google share has remained relatively stable over recent months.
That appears to be an ironic replication of the situation with browsers. In most cases, it appears people changing browser do so from one Internet Explorer rival to another, that most likely being because the majority of people who would be inclined to try a different browser will have abandoned Microsoft long ago. That’s why, for example, much of the growth experienced by Chrome appears to have come at the expense of the likes of Firefox.
With search engines, it looks as if Google really is in a position where even if you can make an argument it isn’t the best option, its a strong force of habit. That might be bad news for the long-term growth of Bing.
Another debatable topic is how much of Bing’s growth is down to it being a superior search tool and how much is down to marketing and promotion. Business Insider has an interesting run-down of some of the tactics Microsoft has used to drive traffic to Bing, including persuading manufacturers to include Bing toolbars on new PCs, linking to it from all over the MSN site, and even running promotional messages in online games such as Farmville.
That isn’t to say Microsoft isn’t relying on traditional advertising. It’s just launched a TV campaign in the United Kingdom based on the idea of “information overload” from other search engines meaning users need a tool such as Bing to get a straight answer to a question.
Unfortunately the example they choose (“Which tube is it to Euston station?”) isn’t a great one: simply typing the question into Google gives the first result as the relevant Wikipedia page, which directly answers the question in its first paragraph.
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