From Google To Bing - Is Traffic Shifting?

[kidder]

With all the webmaster noise about Google slicing and dicing its search results to suit it's own purposes it would be interesting to get an update on what people are seeing in their stats programs when comparing Google to Bing. At the end of the day its the users who will vote with their feet, we are seeing some good levels of Bing traffic from one of our sites that targets an older demographic and it certainly looks like there is a slight shift in the force. Should we be carefull what we wish for?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Here in the UK Google is still very much on top. Unfortunately there are no signs of Bing making any significant inroads.

[tedster]

I'm seeing mostly that Bing is taking a chunk of Yahoo's traffic share, not Google's.

[KenB]

I'm seeing Bing gain in percentage of visitors at the expense of Google, but it is like a mosquito sucking blood from an elephant, not much impact.

[drall]

Bing traffic is growing nicely for us, Yahoo traffic shrinking. Google traffic down slightly so ya pretty much what Kenb and Tedster said.

[arizonadude]

This is going to change if Google keeps it up.

This just happend to a searcher and it would not let them enter the search they wanted. They had to go to Bing to do it.

I had entered a pair of keywords and like usual a drop down menu appeared with suggestions. What happened next blew my mind. It kept automatically inserting one of those suggestions. I kept removing it and it would do it again and again. I have never had this happen.

I haven't seen this widespread yet, but it Google is no longer going to let you search for what you want to type in, they will lose searchers fast.

[KenB]

I haven't seen this widespread yet, but it Google is no longer going to let you search for what you want to type in, they will lose searchers fast.

I agree, providing a link to suggested searches and/or providing suggestions in a dropdown is one thing, changing the search I want to conduct is an entirely different story. Sometimes I actually want to look for what Google thinks is a misspelling.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Sometimes I actually want to look for what Google thinks is a misspelling.

Yes, me too! Here in the UK and particularly Scotland we use lots of regional words that G does not recognise. It can get annoying when it does this.

[J_RaD]

my bing traffic is pretty weak.

my yahoo traffic is up to about 80% of my google levels 3 years ago, which is good cause my yahoo traffic was pretty weak 3 years ago.

it does also seem bing traffic is higher quality then google and yahoo though.

-------PPC speaking---------

[lammert]

Computer technology oriented site:
Google: 93%
Google Image: 1.5%
Yahoo: 2.5%
Bing: 1.5%
Other: 1.5%

Travel site:
Google: 69%
Google Image: 26%
Yahoo: 1.5%
Bing: 1.5%
Other: 2.0%

Live had about the same figures one year ago as Bing now.

[webroot]

I am getting Bing.com search traffic almost equal what comes from Google, i have also noticed with set of keywords that Bing SERP is very close to Google SERP results.

This could mean they have really improved their search algorithm and the reason for becoming more popular.

[mcneely]

This could mean they have really improved their search algorithm and the reason for becoming more popular.

Both are going opposite directions.

Bing is becoming more relevant, and Google is becoming less relevant.

[Digmen1]

Somehow Bing need to get people to set them as their default search engine.

Me, I use Firefox and have Google as my default search engine.

I really want to set Bing as my default, but have not got around to it yet.

(they need to make it easy to do !)

[mark_roach]

As far as I can tell Bing has made no ground against Google in the UK. People often use the term 'google it' to mean search and hardly anyone I know has heard of Bing.

My stats back this up.

August 2009
Google 59.64%
Bing 2.43%

January 2010
Google 58.45%
Bing 2.54%

With each month in between having pretty similar numbers.

[KenB]

Somehow Bing need to get people to set them as their default search engine.

Me, I use Firefox and have Google as my default search engine.

I really want to set Bing as my default, but have not got around to it yet.

(they need to make it easy to do !)

You can find Bing or any other of the countless search engine add-ons for Firefox via the "Manage Search Engines" link when the down arrow in the search box is clicked. Or you can just go to Add-ons page for Bing at: [addons.mozilla.org...]

[supafresh]

Google > Bing > Yahoo

Bing oddly enough converts better than Google from my data.

[KenB]

Bing oddly enough converts better than Google from my data.

Same here, I get a better ad CTR with Bing users AND on average they request more pages on my site per visit.

[Boulder90]

Same here. Less traffic from Bing but more conversions.

[KenB]

How does international traffic from Bing compare to international traffic from Google?

Maybe the different conversion rates have something to do with this.

[wheel]

somebody needs to write some scumware that flips the default search engine in your browser over to bing.

OK, just kidding. Don't hurt me.

[mack]

I think one of the main reasons Bing hasn't made much progress in the UK is lack of awareness. Not seen one advert for Bing, yet Google are on every 2nd billboard promoting Chrome.

Mack.

[northweb]

I've seen a SLIGHT increase in bing over the past 4 months.....long way to go to impact my sites.

[dickbaker]

For me, Google is 58%, Yahoo 13% and Bing 12%. It's only recently that Bing has really moved up. Prior to Bing being in the mix, Google was 60 to 63%.

Interestingly enough, my rankings on Bing are much like what my rankings on Google used to be, which is to say #1 to #3, before Google started putting off-topic results ahead of me.

[Digmen1]

[/You can find Bing or any other of the countless search engine add-ons for Firefox via the "Manage Search Engines" link when the down arrow in the search box is clicked. Or you can just go to Add-ons page for Bing at: [addons.mozilla.org...]

Those solutions while appreciated, are not really "most people friendly" and they take a real desire to do it.

Somebody needs to write some scumware that flips the default search engine in your browser over to Bing. ]

What they really need is a button on the Bing Home Page saying "Make Bing Your default Browser" and then it installs those patches automatically !

So that when someone tried Bing either for the first time or later, they can easily make it their default.

I think I might offer this idea to Steve Ballmer, should be worth a few K ! or Mil ?

[KenB]

I'm sure MSFT could pay Mozilla to put Bing into the default list of Firefox search engines on new Firefox profiles, but it wouldn't be so cool to add Bing to the list of search engines on existing Firefox profiles without the user's permission.

As said above, MSFT needs to add a link the Bing homepage that offers to add Bing to users' list of search engines if they like. Microsoft probably also needs to put more effort into offline advertising of Bing.

[wyweb]

Bing's taken over maybe 5% of my traffic.

Which corresponds to an appx 5% loss of yahoo traffic.

It's just a reshuffle of wannabe's. That's all.

[nomis5]

So, the consensus seems to be that Bing is pinching some traffic from Yahoo but not from Google. Comscore reports back that up and it's what I see in my sites.

If that's the case, does Microsoft benefit financially from the increase in traffic taken from Yahoo? In the short term, long term? My uninformed opinion is that Microsoft do benefit financially. But how much does that compare to their advertising spend in the US?

[tedster]

I'm pretty sure that so far it's a net loss. At Pubcon, the MS representative told us (to a standing ovation) that Microsoft's commitment to Bing is for the long term. They don't expect their advertising to show a short term profit at all - it will take years.

[sean22]

Bing for me is around 10% now, Yahoo is around 2%. I didn't care for Bing in the past but it does help offset the search swings of Google search.