All the fuss about Microsoft finally posing a credible challenge to Google with Bing, its new search engine, misses the real primary target of Microsoft’s search efforts: Yahoo. Microsoft knows it can’t unseat Google anytime soon, but it does have a fighting chance of taking down Yahoo to soften it for an acquisition or simply take over the No. 2 spot in search. Even that day is still a long ways away, with Yahoo commanding about twice as much search market share in the U.S. as Bing.
But data from Bing’s first full month after launch suggests that its initial share gains are coming out of Yahoo’s hide, not Google’s. ComScore released its June qSearch market share figures to Wall Street analysts last night (click on the table below from Barclays to enlarge), and they show Bing making a modest 0.4 percent gain in search query volume to 8.4 percent, compared to May, 2009. (Compete reported a 0.3 percent jump in search market share for Bing from May to June.)
Whlle that gain was modest, and less than what some of Bing’s own self-reported traffic numbers would have suggested, it pretty much all came out of Yahoo’s hide. According to comScore, Yahoo’s search market share declined 0.5 percent to 19.6 percent from May, 2009. Google’s market share stayed steady at 65 percent.
Shortly after Bing’s launch, comScore reported strong initial interest in the new search engine, but how much of that will translate into actual search market share remains to be seen. Bing’s 8.4 percent market share just brings Microsoft’s share slightly above where it was in March, and it is still below the 9.2 percent share it commanded a year ago. Bing still has along way to go. But as it gains traction, it isn’t Google that should be worried. It is Yahoo.
U.S. Core Search Share, June 2009 (Source: comScore qSearch)
| 65.0% | 0.0% m/m | +3.5% y.y | |
| Yahoo | 19.6% | -0.5% m/m | -1.3% y/y |
| Microsoft | 8.4% | +0.4% m/m | -0.8% y/y |
| AOL | 3.1% | +0.04% m/m | -1.0% y/y |
| Ask | 3.9% | +0.03% m/m | -0.4% y/y |
Ofcourse they say, “Never Predict” but I’d still like to say that Bing would very soon be the #2 Search Engine.
They have indeed a superior technology and with the Microsoft Muscle behind it there is no reason why it would not catch up.
BINGo moment for Microsoft
I have to say I agree. BING is far better a solution for searching with, most of the time for me, a lot better than Google even.
Also I have noted lots of people now using BING, I dont know anyone at all who uses Yahoo..BING will be #2 very soon, and I think some people at Google may even be looking over their shoulder within the year….
Yes, I agree. Bing is very likely to become the #2 search engine.
Bing is getting slow at times. I hope they fix it and make it stable.
Bing is decent and certainly on the rise, I don’t think it will be able to compete with Google and even yahoo.
Here is a review I found. Interesting stuff, check it out
http://www.expe...-search-review/
The only way to see previous background pictures (arrows on the lower right) is by installing a Silverlight plugin.
There is no technical reason for this! Just MS being MS. This is proof enough to me that they don’t get it and never will. Google would never require a plugin just to use a feature on the main page!
This report shows that Microsoft can win the race of Search Engine because this progress is the sign of winning edge.
Google want to kicked out to Microsoft in the WWW so it is also launching Chrome OS to kill Windows even Google Docs is the warrior of MS Office package.
Do you think that Google can kill Microsoft? or Microsoft can win the race of Search Engine?
It just shows what Microsoft can do when they actually have a good product. They would still easily dominate the browser market if they had put some effort into Internet Explorer.
Also now Buying out Yahoo is out of question now. Yahoo was worth to Microsoft primarily because of its search share.
BINGo. Actually, buying Yahoo’s search share is not out of the question, but I would surmise it is getting cheaper by the day.
Well don’t forget about email and their host of services, such as small business and finance, which are still some of the most popular on the web. Yahoo still has some very valuable web properties (for the moment).
it will still be years before Bing or anyone else can beat Google, the king of search. put it is surprising that Bing even gained market shares when IE was losing to Firefox which has Google set as the default search engine. http://bit.ly/r0xdl
is there a report for June world wide search percentage? because Bing spent $100 million marketing, I don’t think it made that much of impact on the global scale.
All the rhetoric is about “beating” Google, but Microsoft doesn’t have to BEAT Google, just become a strong #2. Also, if you want to talk WORLDWIDE search percentage, Baidu is #2, although it is still not clear if comScore is measuring them correctly yet (they were not a year ago).
I find all the fuss funny. Microsoft already had market share in search. They re-branded Livesearch. Not saying it’s a bad thing but they have been in the search game a long time now and have a lot of residual traffic is being re-directed to Bing now. Yes Bing is a better experience for sure and will increase returning visitors because of it but they did not just enter the search game out of the blue.
@jaypiddy
I for one expect Google to be dead by 2010!
I was just going through the stats for some of my websites and noticed that the amount of traffic I’m getting from Microsoft is almost triple that of Yahoo and half of what I get from Google. There has been a large increase in the last month and I’m wondering if it’s because the launch of Bing has drawn more searches and it’s a temporary thing? Hope not…
Well of course they are, with such an advertising deal
Yeah, Good luck to the Bing team.
http://tinyurl.com/tcguide
Bing is amazing
This is the third time I’ve read this on TechCrunch now…
Yahoo search sucks either way.
I think that these numbers hide a lot of the support/usage of Bing.
Assumption: when a search-engine doesn’t do a great job of giving answers/results on the first iteration, people will often re-phrase/issue the query. This is a distinct, follow-on query (I believe). When Live et al delivered OK (not great) results, this led to a number of more queries until task-completion (or abandonment).
Impact: Bing does a great job of giving answers/results on the first SERP/iteration. People accomplish their goals quickly, leading to fewer re-phrasing of queries. Overall then, the total number of queries goes down.
Therefore, the increase in numbers (while modest) indicates that more people are using it, and are also more satisfied with the experience. I think that these are great numbers, since they indicate more users, better experience/outcome, and are also good for the advertising partners.
The point is that each person who used to need 4 queries now needs only 1; the fact that the data shows a slight growth indicates (maybe) that they are doing more unique, new queries.
Very impressed; but Bing does need to continue making progress on distribution, partnerships, and innovation.
Wow, that’s quite a stretch. Do you work in marketing by chance?
dude, what ex-google aka current bingo (employee working on bing) is saying is true. searches alone doesn’t tell the whole story. It depends a lot on whether the searcher is satisfied or not. 1 month is a very short time to talk about marketshare gain/loss. But, yahoo is a toast anyways.
Bing is doing well due to Microsoft had hired former Yahoo executive Dr Qi Lu as the new head of its Online Services group. Dr Lu was executive vice president of engineering for the Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo, responsible for improving the web firm’s search technology.
Qi Lu started working in Jan.
If you know anything about the MSFT culture, it should be that he can’t have had influence/impact in that short of a time. The teams and people are the reason for Bing, not him.
The product groups have been working on Bing for years – the brand launch was originally slated for Spring 2008, but was pulled because of the Y! fiasco.
And the product/features have been under dev for many product cycles.
Qi is still settling into his office (yes, despite his immense work ethic/schedule).
The problem with Google search is that it knows about you too much, but often misuses its knowledge. When I’m logged in with Google account, I get much worse Google search results than I get when I’m not logged in. As I’m using many Google applications, I’m almost constantly logged with Google account in all browsers, and thus get those localized biased search results. Bing doesn’t know so much context about each user and simply returns generic results, that are good for most cases.
Nevertheless, I must admit, Google search shines for rare keywords searches – that’s where difference in index sizes comes into play.
Bings relevancy sucks. Once the launch euphoria and TV ads subside, so will bings market share.
“Bing Relevancy Sucks” – For Example?
Would n’t it be nice if you could give some examples?
Watch here
http://mamun-sc...e-bing-has.html
poor yahoo…
P.S. I concur. Bing’s relevancy does suck. its for retarded people who don’t know what they want.
Bing’s relevancy is known to match Google’s and at times exceed what Google brings back for searches. You sound like someone who hasn’t tried the product, but decides to hate it because its made by Microsoft. So I’m guessing if you think bing sucks, then Google must suck too? Must be one of those loyal Yahoo! customers.
Is known by who? You?
I think you may be interpreting the numbers incorrectly. It’s true that Yahoo’s share is going down, Bing’s is going up, and Google is staying the same. But that doesn’t mean that Yahoo users are switching over to Google.
I think the more likely case is that:
1) Yahoo (and Ask, AOL) continues to hemorrhage users to Google as the less net savvy finally discover a better tool. This has held steady for quite some time, and I don’t think Bing interrupts it.
2) Google’s more net savvy users give Bing a try and switch over to see what all the hype is about. The net affect is that Google holds steady, but in reality this represents a different trend; someone has finally found a way to swipe some users from Google.
So the storyline is a little different than how you portray it. Yahoo continues to bleed, though that’s nothing new. Bing proves that google isn’t monolithic and that you can get users to switch search engines. Yahoo doesn’t need to worry about anything new; it’s been losing share like it’s their job. Google does need to come to terms with the fact that it can’t continue to gain share simply by offering the best 10 blue links; you have to keep improving the experience or the users will stray…
100 million in ads + Constant buzz on all forms of media = .004
Much to do about nothing
exactly…good point.
it’s 0.4/8.4 * 100 % improvement = 4.8% — very huge in my opinion
Also, the overall search market is atleast 20 billion, so getting 0.4% of 20 billion = 800 million for spending 100 million is quite good in my opinion
Search marketshare is worth ZERO if you’re not making money with search advertising.
That’s why microsoft needs Yahoo…not for marketshare
Tilu
I will not address your theory on PPC, but you should check your math, your off by over 700m
Well except that bimg only won 0.4% in Us not global search. Expect much less in global (no ads for bing in europe)
Frankly, I’m so sick of their media blitz at this point, I don’t care if the site can tell me where I left my car keys, I’m not even going to bother checking it out.
Then again, one less user is probably a good thing. I’ve never dealt with a MicroSoft product that didn’t become bogged down, brittle and bloated as soon as they tried to scale, enhance and maintain it.
Thanks for the information!
Rick Arvielo
I suppose Yahoo is number two because a lot of software install the Yahoo toolbar.
I can’t imagine a large number of people going to Yahoo.com to search.
I loved Bing at the first sight but I can’t help going back to Google because the results are more relevant. See the examples on http://isayusay...apctackgaabmpkb
Seems like those comments are old as they don’t apply anymore. I tried each of the examples and the bing results seem the same or better.
Wondering while those people found bing better than yahoo.
Doing a search on: suresome.com, you can have good results from every seach engine (yahoo, google, aol, ask) except bing.
Everyone Should test mashables’s search test quiz before saying it they are happy with bing or google or yahoo.
I tested and I was surprised myself.
So, for those who here think they love bing (unless you belong to MSFT) please check mashable quiz.
The strength of Yahoo is more in its media offerings than in its search technology.
In the long run, Microsoft will win in a competition of technology, but it will be interesting to see how long Yahoo’s media umbrella will slow its inevitable fall.
http://blindsea...com/?q=Mashable
Test how good bing/yahoo/google is.
I’m seeing a lot of traffic coming to my site from Bing, but it’s sending people to OLD links that are no longer valid. I set the old directory to disallow in the robots.txt a long time ago, which it seems to be ignoring completely. Really annoying.
bing’s Webmaster Center is also a joke. Their “Webmaster Tools” can validate your robots.txt file, but you have to cut/paste it. Clicking on the couple links they do have launch new windows all over the place. Not impressed, they still have a lot of work to do.
There is some magic in those nice front page images at the Bing. I do not want to miss anyone of them.
Erick: Bing’s share increase (from 8.02% to 8.4%) is a gain of 0.4 percentage points, not 0.4 percent.
I would agree that BING sucks. Other day I was searching for FRIENDS videos on BING and it was totally bizarre with the results. If you check out “Google” for the same. You will for sure know the difference.
This is just noise folks. Microsoft had even higher search share than this in January. Give it 3 months, then we’ll see who is really #2.
Bing will never be like Google. It’s very hard, impossible to catch up on Google
Thats not true. Who knows?
I thought so until few days ago … Played with Bing for couple of weeks and now I rarely go to Google/Yahoo. I believe Bing’s share would grow slowly but it would grow for sure. Google cannot forever feed us those black and blue links.. It is time to innovate!
Easy to gain market share from Yahoo! as many users were and are unable to access their email accounts for days (!) now.
They don’t even get an error message as there’s no way you can let Yahoo! know about this either.
Hence, you can’t access personal search either.
Bing search is pretty good. Ofcourse Google still gives better results.
I like Google’s simple front screen as it would work well even with hand-held devices. I don’t want lot of images and clutter on the frontscreen.
And after android picks up am sure google will make sure google search engine is the default on each of those devices giving them an edge.
I use Google for site search and Bing for image search, I realy like the way Bing handles the image search experience.
I think it is going to be interesting to see whether Bing can eat into Google’s market share when Office goes online. Google rose to fame purely through search, and then branched out into email, browsers, maps, and documents. Microsoft could crush Google docs with Office online, and then branch out into search by incorporating Bing into the cloud productivity suite. Interesting stuff.
With the latest vista update or I don’t know what else keyword.URL in my firefox was changed to redirect to bing – it absolutely trickery by microsoft. (keyword.URL is where you redirected when typing something wrong in address bar).
Bing search has NOT convinced me at all.
Mostly what i’ve typed before appears in the search history i’ve ever typed in the webbrowser to search for in google , yahoo or ask i’m not saying you have identical search results not within a mile between the three above.
But it seems like a coincidence. Which I checked caus yahoo gave normaly lame search results although it got improved lately. Ask manage to gives you something to dig further with. Google is my number on search result.
BING does not show result it seems to behave like some of the above especially one in particular so no I’m not convinced in what BING does it seems more like a copy cat then a search engine.