Badda Bing! How does Bing fare in the Battle of the Search Engines?

May 12

MikeWeb Industry , , No Comments

Nearly a year on from Microsoft’s launch of Bing, it’s newly revamped version of Windows Live Search, we look at how the new kid on the block has fared over the last 12 months and whether it has succeeded in tempting us away from the big guns of search engines.

Pitched by Microsoft as ‘not being a search engine but a decision engine’ many who initially reviewed the site had to agree that this was a good and accurate description.  Microsoft’s focus was on providing a quality search feature which would return the kind of relevant results that around 42% of us say we fail to get with other search engines.  Indeed Bing’s marketing campaign centered on the problem information overload from other sites which often returned a large amount of unnecessary or irrelevant results.  Bing on the other hand would return better results and a host of other features so users can tailor them further.

So what has happened to Bing in the last 12 months?  It would seem that Microsoft can give itself a big pat on the back because Bing has rapidly picked up its market share and sits a comfortable third behind Google and Yahoo! when it comes to search query traffic.  In fact at one point last year Bing actually hit the #2 spot behind Google – however this was somewhat short lived and lasted just a day!  But since then Bing has enjoyed continued growth, increasing its market share of search queries month on month even though its competitors were seeing falls in their share of all search query traffic.

Not bad considering how poor its predecessor was and that its launch was considered by many to very low key and with little fanfare.   While some may be wondering just how Bing has managed to obtain such as strong foothold in the market in such a short space of time but just remember Microsoft has a lot of money to invest in the idea and spent millions of dollars in TV ads, radio commercials, etc.   However, it would seem that Yahoo! was actually Microsoft’s main target.  On the 29th July 2009 Yahoo! did a deal with Microsoft which will actually see it powered by Bing over the next ten years.  Bing’s market share would therefore increase from 10% to around 28% and although still less than half of Google’s overall share, it is none the less a massive leap forward towards its biggest competitor.

Google must now be looking over its shoulder especially as some commentators have accused it of complacency as Bing continued to gather momentum and introduce feature after feature to its UI, many of which are missing from Google’s interface.  But Bing has not been without its criticism – a difficult-to-use experience for first time users.
However, the figures speak for themselves and it would seem that twelve months on Bing is here to stay and is set to grow bigger and better.  Whether it will tempt us to quit Google altogether remains to be seen but it is becoming the preferred search engine choice for many web users and where Microsoft takes Bing from here will be interesting.