Bing fizzles in Korea

on the rise everywhere else... but stuck at less than 1% of Korean search

[GrendelKhan TSU]

big shocker...
unlike the rest of the world where BING seems to be making some progress.... Bing had a slight bump when launched in korea and now at a whopping 0.15% of search. wweeeee!

bing fizzles in Korea [joongangdaily.joins.com]

and one can't help but find this amusing:

One reason for Bing’s popularity here during mid-June was the fact that in Korea, Bing users could access “adult sites” without having to go through adult identification log-ins. During the second week of June, over 58 percent of all search keywords were related to adult sites.

open adult search FTW! :P

so sayeth GrendelKhan{TSU}

[edited by: GrendelKhan_TSU at 8:59 am (utc) on July 6, 2009]

[bill]

That makes sense. Bing hasn't thrived in Japan either. They're a bit late with many of the features that give the US version its edge. If more of the local features worked here then you might see more uptake.

Honestly speaking though, the average user can't tell the difference between Bing and Google in my tests. I was given permission to switch 10 Japanese users default to Bing. Not one of them has complained or asked to be switched back to Yahoo or Google. Most of them don't realize that I'd switched their SE default. They liked the new pictures on the front page of Bing though. SERPs-wise they couldn't say one was better than the other.

[GrendelKhan TSU]

I could see that.

hmmm.. now that you put it that way.. I'd actually actually be interesting to run the blind search test [blindsearch.fejus.com] adding naver or daum (for korea) or whatever local engine and see if that made a difference.

[bill]

A blind test would be more objective. I wasn't so subtle. ;)
If you do run something like that do let us know. I simply flipped a bunch of machines in my office. That wasn't very scientific, but the results were unexpected. I thought they'd all be clamoring for their default.

[LifeinAsia]

Reminds me of the old Folger's Crystals Instant Coffee commercials...

Announcer: "We secretly replaced the browsers of these unsuspecting cubicle workers. Let's see if any of them noticed. Sir, how was your search?"
Jim: "Kinda bad. I think I need to search again."
Carol: "That's strange, Jim never searches a second time at home..."