Bing Increases Share Again

[Brett_Tabke]

Google accounted for 65.09 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending August 27, 2011. The combined Bing-powered search comprised 28.99 percent of searches for the month, with Yahoo! Search and Bing receiving 15.89 percent and 13.10 percent, respectively. The remaining 64 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report accounted for 5.92 percent of U.S. searches.

Longer search queries increase 3 percent in August 2011
Longer search queries — those averaging five to eight words or more — increased 3 percent from July 2011 to August 2011. One-word searches comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 26.26 percent of all queries. Shorter search queries — one to four words — decreased 1 percent from July 2011 to August 2011.

[izurl.com...]

[tangor]

Works for me. I've seen my Bing share rise (a tad more than reported above) but that might be due to the niche(s) where I operate. Will additionally remark that the Bing side seems to bring more qualified and targeted results... but then again, I am in very narrow niche markets.

[wheel]

I doubt I see quite that ratio of traffic from the two search engines, I'm pretty google heavy. nevertheless, in many industries Bing sends an unexpectedly high % of high quality purchasers as traffic - much higher than Google. So even though the number of visitors is lower, the sales are better and bigger. Maybe I should be prioritizing Bing a bit more.

[Propools]

Our #'s are split equal between Yahoo and Bing but combined they're roughly 23% of search for us.

An interesting point of note in the first data chart [hitwise.com] is that Yahoo Search increased 2% more than Bing's.
So, what does that say about the user experience valuation of Yahoo vs. Bing?

Which, causes me to wonder if the raw numbers that Google is down are going entirely to Bing and Yahoo?
Or is some of the increase in Bing and Yahoo come from the other 64 other search engines?
Where does the fit of Bing & Facebook work into all of this?

[Propools]

Given this data [hitwise.com], what signal(s) is this sending about a user's specificity and/or expectation of search results.
ie. 1-4 keywords is down and long tail is up.

[MrFewkes]

I dont get it to be honest.

From google I get say 300 - then from everyone else I get a combined 30 clicks.

And yet I am number 1 in Bing and G for the same term

[nomis5]

Both (or all three) are roughly as bad the others so it really makes no difference. And as far as I know Bing is making tiny increases in market share at mouth-watering cost.

I do note though that the Yahoo share is staying roughly the same which shows that the average user can't distinguish between Yahoo, Bing and Google. They are just sticking with the same old search engine they always have.

[J_RaD]

any dent bing / yahoo can make into google is a good thing.

[loner]

My Bing share has risen considerably more than that also. It came up right after being Pandalized two months ago. Personally, I don't care for the creepy Goo interface.

[whatson]

Don't believe those figures.

[skibum]

Seems like a lot for Bing/Yahoo! Could it be that the number of searches went up but the people who search on Google tend to click on more than one listing or that people search on Bing and don't click on anything?

[walkman]

After my Panda changes Bing /Yahoo increased well over 100%, Goog went down to next to nothing and with third rate keywords and traffic is throttled too apparently. I'm 100% sure it isn't due to metrics we know, and I am no longer willing to believe that some fair 'secret sauce' is being used either. Bing uses click satisfaction metrics too and Bing is way pickier on content than Google, the monetizer Pro.

So, are we to understand that panda has been a success or maybe we should ask what is 'success'? IIRC, an engineer of theirs (his name escapes me but he was a G fellow) claimed users are very satisfied. Looks they are showing their alleged satisfaction in a weird way with about 6% loss since Panda, if my memory is correct.

Bing needs to replace the G contract on Firefox and see if they can make Bing a default on IE (I think it's a choice now) since Google has a lot of market share.

Now the bad news: Google needs to make the same money +20-30% a year on less market share.

Both (or all three) are roughly as bad the others so it really makes no difference. And as far as I know Bing is making tiny increases in market share at mouth-watering cost.

I do note though that the Yahoo share is staying roughly the same which shows that the average user can't distinguish between Yahoo, Bing and Google. They are just sticking with the same old search engine they always have.

That's why it makes sense to spend a lot of money upfront and then give them no reason to leave, in other words provide decent enough results.

[J_RaD]

Bing needs to replace the G contract on Firefox

most FF users would just whine in blog comments about it.

[walkman]

most FF users would just whine in blog comments about it.

Probably but it's changed with a drop-down click, and techies know that. The top FF developer isn't a fan of Google's privacy issues, or lack of privacy and IIRC he posted about it. Money is not an option for both sides, especially for MSFT, so something might happen.

Google is making a lot of enemies lately now that their thin mask fell off. See G+, content buying, Panda, favoring their own properties, shady behavior, etc. A while back it was a sacrilege to even wonder if Google is doing something bad, now that fanboi club is losing members. And most of the dirt, or the truth, will be coming out soon as FTC and EU start to read and eventually leak private emails and meeting minutes detailing Google's true attitudes.

[J_RaD]

Google is making a lot of enemies lately now that their thin mask fell off.

its about time, i saw thru their mask about 5 years ago.

[mrguy]

It all depends on your niche market.

Some niches get more searches from Bing/Yahoo because those particular visitors tend to use that search engine.

I noticed more of my techy traffic comes from Google while some of my best women shopper traffic comes from Yahoo.

Works for me, I hate Google and hope they suffer a slow agonzizing death as a company. :)

[tangor]

As mentioned above, while Google still sends the majority of users, the quality (and clicks/conversions) from Bing is much better. Could it be because Bing has not draped their serps with ads, their products, etc? Could it be that those from Bing aren't worn out clicking on useless stuff?

Not making a sales pitch, just trying to figure this odd traffic/conversions krap out!

And as the old saying goes: follow the money. If Bing gives me more and I don't have to jump through hoops to get it, guess where I'm going...

[tenerifejim]

Like mrguy says, and it's been mentioned a few times elsewhere that, Bing/ Yahoo perform better depending on market niches and verticals.

But would anyone care to speculate confirm which verticals are better for traffic and why that would be?

[walkman]

Google's bad days are just beginning, the world is wising up to them and the Kool-aid supplies are running low.

Just today:

The Authors Guild, a U.S. advocacy group, is leading a copyright infringement lawsuit seeking seizure of 7 million books digitized by Google Inc. (GOOG) and stored at five colleges including the University of Michigan.

The writers, including the Australian Society of Authors and the Quebec Writers Union, sued yesterday in federal court in New York claiming the universities obtained unauthorized scans of the copyright-protected books.

[bloomberg.com...]

Brendan Eich, who founded JavaScript and is chief technology officer of Firefox maker Mozilla, worries that Google's approach will degrade the Web with proprietary technology that means Web sites and Web apps will work only in one browser. He accused Google of "open-washing"--giving a project a gloss of openness when in practice a technology is still controlled by a single company. And he expressed skepticism about whether Google really intends to standardize Dart.

Google: the new Microsoft?
"GOOG is acting more like MSFT of old," Eich said in a Hacker News discussion of the memo. "Innovating in the open and proposing early and often to standards bodies are fine. Delayed-open-washing and increasing piles of proprietary (open-source doesn't matter) single-vendor code, which implements features that are not ever proposed for standardization, are not."

[cbsnews.com...]

How is this related to market share? If it wasn't, Google wouldn't invest so much in propaganda. Good press kept them until now.

[wheel]

But would anyone care to speculate confirm which verticals are better for traffic and why that would be?

Speculation. Yahoo rep once said their target market was females in the 20-40 range (I'm paraphrasing). this was part of a PPC discussion.

In addition to women of childbearing years,I suspect the rest of their users go by the name 'grampa' or 'grandma'.

Both of those groups under the right circumstances are a gold mine of credit cards looking to bet maxxed out.

If I was selling coupons, I'd be on Bing. If I was selling Ipad3's, I'd be on Google.

But that's just my gut check.

[dstiles]

Sadly, in UK we're still seeing google as the primary reference source, with bing/yahoo a very poor second - at least, my sites are seeing that. I do wish UK visitors would wise up. :(

[SEOPTI]

Bad news, not only in the UK, unfortunately also in Germany Goog is the primary traffic source, it seems people in Europe are some kind of Lemming.

I love Bing and wish them all the best including a healthy market share.

[tangor]

Germany is responding (in sort) by taking out FB [theregister.co.uk...] and have been hassling Google all along. Might that eventually catch up?

Meanwhile, though Bing is "worldwide" recent experience with EU has indicated caution penetrating that market (though why the UK has been reticent is a puzzle).

Meanwhile two (2), I'd rather have 1 good conversion per 1,000 than 1 in 25,000... better metrics on my bandwidth and spend, etc and all that other ROI kind of thing. THAT SAID, what works here might not work elsewhere, so all should keep open minds... and due diligence as long as such exercise does not impact the morning coffee... :)

[Rockzer]

Bing, is just taking their shares in the market, but none of the webmaster receives any traffic bing. I dunno what these guys are planning, bing bots always crawl but no traffic @ all.

[SEOPTI]

Then you are doing something wrong, I get 90% traffic from Bing/Yahoo and 10% from Goog.

[J_RaD]

i think it is just probably lack of optimizing for any other search engine except for goog. Then they wonder why no other SE brings them traffic ? really ?

[nomis5]

90% traffic from Bing / Yahoo? So why the imbalance compared to the rest of the world?

[SEOPTI]

nomis5:

[webmasterworld.com...]

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