Kurt wrote an interesting post on Christian SEO Guys this morning titled Bing to Dethrone Google? which shows that Bing has made significant gains in its search market share at the expense of Google. He wrote:
According to Experian’s Hitwise.com, Bing saw a 5% increase in their search market share last month, breaching 30% of the market for the first time, while Google saw a 3% decrease. Those figures may not seem very impressive at first, that is until you see that Bing has been gaining 5% now for the past 6 months during which time Google has seen an average decline of about 3% each month.
At this rate Bing will overtake Google as the leader in the search market by January 2012!
But is Bing really getting more popular?
While Kurt and many others point to Bing’s TV ad campaign and improving search results as reasons for Bing’s gains, a look below the surface shows 3 additional reasons for Bing’s gains that are unrelated to providing better search results or swaying consumers search habits.
1) Bing bought its way into partnership with Yahoo. Bing itself still trails Yahoo in market share 14.3% to 15.7% By making a deal to supply the results to searches on Yahoo Bing has more than doubled its market share.
2) Bing bought its way into partnership with Facebook. When a person searches in Facebook, the web results are provided by Bing. I couldn’t find specific numbers on how much of Bing’s traffic comes from Facebook, but it can’t hurt to provide search results for the #2 website in the world.
3) Bing bought Conduit’s search traffic. What is Conduit? It’s a company that enables other organizations to create mobile apps, browser apps, and tool bars. Tech Crunch reported that in December Conduit terminated their deal with Google and started providing search results from Bing. According to Alexa, in January Conduit’s traffic dropped by 165 million pageviews while Bing’s jumped 138 million pageviews. Coincidence? Take a look at this chart and you be the judge.
So, how much of Bing’s gains are because it’s providing better search results or changing consumers search behavior through their “decision engine” marketing campaign? It’s hard to say.
What do you think? Have you changed your search habits lately? Have you seen others switching to Bing?
Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com
Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.
An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.
Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication.
2 Comments
Great points Paul. Bing is definitely making deals to improve their position against Google and it seems to be working well. I think their dealings with Facebook may be one of their smartest moves, but I still wouldn't discount Bing's accuracy and marketing as a major factor. Bing's itself (not including Yahoo) has seen it's market share increase by over 50% in less than a year. Since Bing started providing the Yahoo search results Yahoo's share has also increased about 7%. That's pretty significant.
Hey I don't have changed it.. Still on google, but whether bing is starting a campaign like "no user information storage", I will help them being better than our big brother. Moreover the bing search results are not really satisfying, probably because they are not from google..