Bing, 1 Year On ....

Bing, 1 Year On ….

Little over a year ago, software giant Microsoft revamped and rebranded their search engine as Bing – this self titled ‘decision engine' was launched in the hope of giving the market leaders Yahoo! and Google a run for their money.

Twelve months after the launch of Bing, the decision engine continues to grow at a steady pace against the two other search engine giants.

Although Bing finished third in the search engine rankings for last month taking 12.7% of all users search queries, whereas Yahoo! was visited for 18.9 per cent of searches, and Google remained in the lead with just short of two-thirds of the market at 62.6 per cent.

These figures may seem that Google and Yahoo! are running off into the distance, and that Bing hasn't a hope of catching them, but the trends of the past year give hope to the newcomers.

When Microsoft dropped its Windows Live Search; it held 8% of the market in May 2009, and in the first month alone it increased by .4% in July.

With the decision engine now attracting 12.7%, this means that it has increased nearly four and a half percent in the first year – which means it's grown 50% on its original market share!

At the other end of the scale Google has seen its market share drop over the past year, coming down 2.4 percentage points from 65 per cent of the market.

"There is something that we are doing that is clearly resonating but, that said, we are a low share player," A Microsoft spokesperson, told the BBC.

"We have barely gotten into double digits but we want this to grow into a significant business for Microsoft," he added.

"It is a huge market where there is a significant profit pool that can be achieved."

He went on to say "If Bing takes a long-term view they can make greater inroads than they have but I don't know if they can get beyond 30 to 40 per cent," said Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land. "If they get to 20 per cent-plus, that would be a big win for them.

"Google is very entrenched in the culture and in people's behavior and that is a tough nut to crack”

Search Engine Optimisation/SEO UK News & Website Design News By Thomas Cole Internet Solutions

Posted Thursday July 22^nd 2010
By Thomas Cole Ltd