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Bing Gains 10% Marketshare
samzbest writes "According to ComScore's qSearch, Microsoft's retaliation against Google search, Bing, has gained significant market share, now facilitating close to 10% of US searches. That's a gain of two large points in five months."
With such a retarded name I didn't expect Bing to reach such popularity.
It probably doesn't hurt that IE 8 updates make Bing the default search engine if you go the 'express' route. Even adding google as a search provider is weird - you can't just select it, you have to go to a web page and download the search engine provider package or whatever.
I'm shocked - *SHOCKED* - I tell ya. I find it hard to believe that ComScore would report such a thing.
Yes, I know the numbers may be valid but when a company is reporting on another company, with whom they are partnered, I find it hard to invest any credibility in the report.
Go ahead, you can probably blame some of this on me -- and people like me. I was in the market for an XBox 360 Arcade (with intent to add a HDD on my own) and had found through slick deals mention that if you went to bing and searched for Dell and clicked on the cashback link you could get an XBox 360 Arcade for 15%-30% off depending on when you do it.
... or even just hitting it up every couple days to see what I could find. Kept with Google on my other searches (Firefox and Chrome still put me through the same default search engine). But for a while, my desire to save a couple bucks probably pushed up Bing's marketshare. I can't help it, I blame my overly frugal parents.
... so what happened and who is giving me the money back? Is it Microsoft putting ad dollars to hard work for Bing or the retailer giving up some more profit margin in exchange for moving product? If anyone could shed light on how I was able to get better deals on -- sometimes any -- products on Amazon by first going through Bing, I'd appreciate it. And this isn't like a few pennies click through ad revenue, this is like tens of dollars across several purchases. Am I really that inept at how the world works to not figure this out?
Now, from what I read, your mileage may vary. Meaning you got anywhere from $20 to $30 off the price but you still paid $200. It was just recredited to your paypal account. It happened/happens with other large retailers like Amazon so I found myself periodically using Bing to squeeze 10% off a purchase here or there
I'm not sure how this was orchestrated. I mean, I thought commodities like DVDs and CDs and XBoxes were already shaven down to the some of the lowest prices online
So in the end, I apologize for causing all that cancer. You are correct to direct your slurs at me but I assure you that as soon as those deals dry up I will stop using Bing.
My work here is dung.
I've been seeing a lot of machines lately with the Bing Toolbar installed, and the client having no idea how it got there. Automated updates on a Windows machine are nice, but sometimes you get the latest helpful tool bar offering along with it. Sun Java, Adobe Flash, etc. often offer tool bars and other goodies that although are not harmful, might be unwanted. I'm not sure how much this would skew actual results, but it has to count for a few points of market share and larger reported install base of tool bars and hence search engine use.
When I look at AWstats for my site:
Google 18020 pages (linked to from Google)
Google (Images) 976 pages
Bing 226 pages
And from Google Analytics:
Top traffic sources:
Google 26,738 visits 85.24%
Yahoo 676 visits 2.16%
Bing 346 visits 1.10%
Admittedly the site is not about shopping or entertainment - it's mainly about technical topics which maybe colors the results.
I don't think Microsoft sponsored this article. I believe it just one of many periodic reports on search provider market share.
And personally, I don't think Bing is crap. It actually has some innovative features. I just don't have any incentive to switch from Google, especially with gmail and personalized home pages.
Would you care to tell me why you think Bing is a "piece of crap"?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Everyone is speaking of trickery to get the users. I switched my homepage over by choice - and I'm a Mac Safari user.
Reason? Much against my expectation, I found I liked the daily pictures rather than the blank of Google. I fully expected to prefer the clean look of Google (after all, it was that rather than quality of results which made me move from Alta Vista to Google many years ago.) but instead I found it was time for a change and I like the different appearance and the tagging they do I find interesting.
Search quality results - variable. Some good, some not so. It's no effort to just click the search box top-right and start using Google instead however, so effectively by having Bing as the homepage with a quickly accessible Google search I've got quick access to two potential sets of results.
So yes, I switched over for the pretty pictures. Yes, that's a shallow reason. It's doing no harm however, and I like it.
Cheers,
Ian
Ok, lets try:
http://www.google.com/search?q=bing&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a/
Now the other way:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=google&go=&form=QBRE/
Does anyone actually trust Bing?
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Java is my common irritant with this. Whenever you run the install it hides a checkbox to load some type of crapware by default. I think it actually looks at your computer because it never seems to offer a piece of junk that you already have. It has offered the Google toolbar, MSN toolbar, Open Office, and now:
Bing...
Well, MS is pushing out updates via OS updates.
I discovered the other day that IE on my XP box had suddenly decided that Bing was its default search engine, despite the fact that I'd previously set it to be Google.
I'm not saying I agree any more with the bundling of such things when you install other software (I don't), but Microsoft has an even more privileged access to my system in that they can push updates and I don't even get asked (other than agreeing to a cumulative security update with a long number and no real explanation). I certainly wasn't asked if IE could change its default search engine or to become the default browser (which has happened on occasion).
I have no doubt that a significant amount of their new-found market share was automatically set for users without their knowledge.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I see a lot of people on the slickdeals.net and other "hot deals" forums using bing to take advantage of it's cashback ads.
(That is, you buy a product through a bing search, and you get a certain amount of money returned to you)
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
I find myself using Bing quite a bit. The reason - if I'm logged into gmail or Blogger, then Google shows me as logged in when I search in another tab. I can't log out of Google search while staying logged in to gmail or blogger, so I use Bing. Why do I want to log out? I don't really know - it's not like Google can't still identify me, but it just feels icky to have them blatantly flaunt that they track my searches.
A couple of other items of note - for C# programmers, Bing is nicer in that it allows the sharp sign in a search, as opposed to google which doesn't (even though it does a mightly fine job of returning relavent results anyway). And, probably the best feature of Bing is that it's image search is really nice. You just scroll down and more results are loaded. It's worth using Bing for that feature alone.
However, the trouble with numbers like the ones in the article are that very few people will ever use only Bing. Google is still the de facto search engine, and Bing is an alternative for those times when you want something google doesn't do the way you want it to.
I love your comments. It proves ( at least in my eyes ) corporate evolution. In order to make money, you must improvise, improve and use less resources.
Google, the king of using less resources and improvising, is winning at this time. Microsoft, whom has the resources, is now investing in that side of the business, making themselves better and more productive.
for the end user, this is important, being able to choose whom you want to do your searches with is always a benefit. Now the real question is, the quality of the search results.
I would really enjoy if another search engine would join this field that was as innovative as Google, or had the resources of Microsoft, then a real good fight could happen, and the winner would be the end user.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Why, I did a Bing search myself just the other day. I was using IE for the one thing at work that requires it, and I didn't know that Bing was the default in IE.
It only took me about 15 seconds to change it, though.
Seriously, though, other than the fact that it's the Evil Empire's search, I think this is mostly good. Competition breeds better products.
Seriously? I don't personally know anyone that uses Bing, and I even know a few people that aren't even aware of its existence.
I know that who I kow is a very small slice of "everyone", but still...where are these legions of people using Bing? Could the fact that many Windows Mobile phones use Bing as their default search engine be contributing to this number?
Living With a Nerd
Reasons? Sure. Any result on things is skewed if it relates to MS. How can you call that "reliable"? There's a reason they call it a decision engine and not a search engine. Also, why do I want something that's been rammed down my throat as a default setting? I'd rather choose my own thing not have *constant* hijacking during every IE security update. Just wait for people to do bing bombs as they call "google bombs", and you'll see even more manipulation.
Also, the layout is annoying. Why not have news links up at the top? Why do I give a crap about related searches being linked at the side as opposed to next to each item? Why do I need microsoft self-sponsoring when I search for microsoft on bing? I don't get that with google. Also it sure is interesting that very few search results show up when I put the term google into bing, isn't it?.
I can keep searching more reasons if you want, but the end result is that the quality of results and accuracy is piss poor. Dogpile still beats results/accuracy of bing constantly.
Microsoft, like EA, has been redeeming themselves for the past couple of years. Much like EA realized they were screwed due to their draconian DRM, Microsoft realized it screwed the pooch with Vista. They really have been turning things around, and they seem to be making their business more nimble and listening to what their customers truly want (excluding WinMo 6.5).
A monster like Microsoft can't change direction on a whim. It takes time. Windows 7 is a decent indicator of where they are headed.
Living With a Nerd
Actually, I would expect that most people have heard of Bing already since Microsoft is advertising their asses off to get users to use Bing. Hell, my father knew about Bing since some time early last year (I forget exactly when he mentioned it to me). Even my mother-in-law, who can barely use a computer (she has to ask my wife how to reply to email!), knows about Bing. She isn't going to use it, as I have taught her to use Google.
Nonetheless, 10% appears a bit high, but it isn't terribly far off the mark. Visitors using Bing to find my site make up a little over 7% of my total traffic for the rolling month 10/18 to 11/17 (G=41.58%, Y=10.73%). For the entire month of October, Bing marketshare of total visitors to my site was 7.95% (G=38.91%, Y=12.97%). If you look at traffic generated strictly by search engines, then Bing had a marketshare of 12.84% for October, compared to Google at 62.83% and Yahoo at 20.95%.
So, the numbers aren't that far off, depending upon how you generate the statistics. I've used Bing a little to check it out and also to check where my site ranks on Bing, but I dislike it intensely. I dislike the fact that, on the first SERP, they give you results for your keyword and then variations of your keyword in blocks below that. I prefer using Google because I am able to use sufficiently specific keywords to get results I am looking for. However, I expect most people will probably prefer Bing because they aren't good at selecting keywords and so they will like the fact that they get search results for variations of their chosen keyword, since it will probably help them find what they are looking for faster.
Um... Dragon Age... EA/Bioware ... I can't play my game unless I log into my EA account to verify that my unlocked content is legal.
That's better?
Windows 7 Starter forcing users wanting a real computing experience to upgrade... limitations like not being able to change your background, sounds, or colors and not even having a media center for playing your own media... really? That's not my idea. I wonder how much extra code they had to put in to disable features inherent to the actual OS.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I think the issue isn't so much one of search quality for most people as it is one of trust. In the past, Microsoft have shown no compunction about distorting their search engine results to advance their own agenda, and the recent "why is windows so expensive" debacle suggests that they will probably do so again.
Added to that, there isn't actually anything wrong with Google's results, as such. Room for improvement to be sure, but the reason I use Google is that it seemed to me to deliver better results than all the other engines at the time. That hasn't really changed.
So, lack of trust on the one hand, and no particular dissatisfaction on the other... I think MS may have a bit of a mountain to climb on this one.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
In my experience the bing results have been reasonably fair, but the bing suggested searches have been laughably skewed.
Just look at this example of searching for "linux": http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3604/3585051300_d23a37a32e_o.png
And yes, that is not a photochop, those were the real suggestions from bing. More recently they seem to have cleaned up their suggestions for Linux but who knows what other underhanded tactics they are using or what other search terms are "poisoned".