Bing Gaining Market Share Faster

sopssa sends along a TechCrunch report on comScore qSearch numbers indicating that Bing is currently gaining market share faster than ever before. "In December, Microsoft's search engine gained another 0.4 percent to capture 10.7 percent of US search queries. That makes five straight months of steady share gains for Bing since it launched — Bing's share is up 2.7 percent in total since May, 2009. Google gained only 0.2 percent to end the month with 65.7 percent market share. What is even more interesting is if you look at year-over-year query growth rates for each search engine. Bing's growth is actually accelerating. Its growth rate in query volume was 49.4 percent in December."

Comments

Of course

[smooth wombat]

This is what happens when you make your search engine the default one for your web browser as well as make it difficult for someone to add or change this option.

Duh!

Re:Of course

[kjart]

It's actually pretty easy to change providers in IE - you just click on the drop down beside the search field and select 'Find more providers'. Brings up a page with numerous other search providers you can add (Google, ebay, etc). Also, I think if you go to google manually in IE, there is a prompt in the top right to switch (or at least there used to be - not sure if they killed this).

Also, if you were to apply the same logic, the marketshare gains by google would be non-trivial since they are the default homepage/provider in Firefox. Personally, while I do think the defaults do influence things, I also think you are overstating them slightly. Google's brand alone assures that a lot of non-savvy computer users will still go there despite defaults in their browser, simply because 'google' has become synonymous with 'search' to a large extent.

Re:Of course

[Locke2005]

It also helps if you're willing to PAY people to use your search engine... Publisher's Clearing House sends me a daily email with a link to a Bing page, offering me a chance to win VALUABLE PRIZES by searching. What I've always said: "Anybody can generate $1 million in revenue, if they are given a $2 million marketing budget to do it with." Like our current job creation which is driven almost completely by government deficit spending, I'm not sure increasing search engine market share really counts if you are losing money on every search.

Re:Of course

[Kadin2048]

I did this a few weeks ago and Microsoft makes it intentionally difficult — first, most casual users don't even know that the "Find more providers" list is there. Second, it's not obviously clear that you'd use the "Find more providers" option to change providers; i.e. get rid of Bing completely and use Google instead, rather than add additional options to the menu. Third, if and when you do get to the Microsoft page of search providers, when I went there, Google wasn't even on the front page. It took a number of subsequent clicks to even find it, which seems totally inappropriate given Google's popularity.

This is 100% the usual Microsoft monopoly-leveraging SOP.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

And here's how that goes down with Joe Sixpack, and why it works.

"It's actually pretty easy to change providers in IE - you just click on the drop down beside the search field and select 'Find more providers'. Brings up a page with numerous other sea- Bah too complicated."

Re:Of course

[ByOhTek]

So, clicking the drop down next to the search bar in IE, and selecting 'manage search providers' or whatever it is, is more difficult than clicking the drop down next to the search bar in FireFox and selecting 'Manage Search Engines'.

Funny, their methods seem identical except for Firefox has its drop down on the left, MS is on the right, and there's a bit of synonymous noun/verb switching.

Re:Of course

[XxtraLarGe]

So, clicking the drop down next to the search bar in IE, and selecting 'manage search providers' or whatever it is, is more difficult than clicking the drop down next to the search bar in FireFox and selecting 'Manage Search Engines'.

I'm not going to say that it's more difficult, but rather it's less obvious. People who download & install FF will tend to be more tech savvy than those who use IE because that's what came with their computer. One nice thing that FF does is provide a list of icons for some more common search engines, whereas IE gives you live search or "Find more providers...", and it is a separate drop-down control on a button next to, not within the search window.

I think by and large it's new Windows 7 computer sales with IE 8 that's driving Bing's growth, not that people are saying "Bing is a superior search engine, I think I will use that instead." If you're Joe Sixpack who doesn't know much about computers, you don't care about your web browser or search engine, you just want to be able to surf the web. You buy a new PC, and now instead of typing in your search box, you get Bing search results instead of Google.

Re:Of course

[prestomation]

Two(?) words:
Windows 7

Re:Of course

[Androclese]

I did the "Mom Test"; it has been pretty reliable for testing tech things.

Here is the exact conversation:
me : 'Mom, I want you to change your IE search engine from Bing to Google.'
Mom: 'Why? What's the difference?'
me : 'Google is better.'
Mom: 'Nah, it doesn't matter to me, I just type what I want in there and the results show'
me : 'Can you at least try?'
Mom: 'Fine, where do I do it?'
me : '(start explaining)'
Mom: 'No, no, no, forget it, that's too complicated. Stop with the geek talk; I'm still confused on how Foxfire (sic) can use the same Internet as Windows... how do you expect me to figure this out?'
me : ...

Re:Of course

[adbge]

The OP isn't trying to bash Microsoft or IE for having bing as the default search engine, but is instead pointing out that if you release a new search engine, and then make it the default in a large percent of Internet browsers, of course it will gain ground quickly. This further implies that Bing is gaining market share not on merit, but rather because of its default behavior.

Re:Of course

[recoiledsnake]

I stop arguing with someone's post once I see a 'M$'. It's obvious that they're either 12, a zealot, or a karma whore making up stuff that moderators want to hear. (It worked well here, the GP is at +4 interesting right now).

Re:Of course

[God_TM]

Unfortunately, you're trying to push your agenda without listening to the person with the 'problem'. You even quoted her: "Why? What's the difference? I just type what I want in there and the results show". So you want to take a system that works fine for your mother, and have her conform to the way you do things? Why? It's better? Would your mom *really* notice a difference in the results? I don't see a problem here, other than fanboyism.

Re:Of course

[adiposity]

Google is on the front page (for now), but for about a year it wasn't on the front page of:

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/searchproviders

Ask.com, WikiPedia and ESPN were beating it out, and you had to scroll down the second page about halfway to find it. I'm glad to see it is showing up on the front page.

Honestly, I can't blame them for not wanting to help you find google, but any browser these days has to be able to add a google search engine in less than 2 clicks or it's very annoying for most people.

-Dan

yes!

[nomadic]

Go Microsoft!!!

Sure...

[TrippTDF]

When you pay off everyone and their brother to default to your service, you'll pick up a little momentum...

Re:Sure...

[Lunix Nutcase]

You mean like with Google and Firefox?

Easy to do

[Smidge204]

Gaining market share for Bing is easy when you:

1) Already have the market for browsers (IE)

2) Make Bing the default search for said browsers

3) Direct all search traffic from all sites even remotely Microsoft affiliated through Bing

So what we would expect is everyone who just uses whatever is in front of them to start using Bing, because that's what Microsoft is putting in front of them.
=Smidge=

Re:Easy to do

[Thornkin]

Wasn't all that being done for Live Search too though? And that market share was way below Bing's and dropping. It's something more than just those 3 items.

Stupid reporting

[Anonymusing]

In other news, my 1-year-old child has gained massive weight and height, while I, unfortunately, have not gotten even a millimeter taller.

Google is the established leader, with a massive market share that is unlikely to grow much further. Bing is the new kid on the block, starting at zero. Of course Bing is going to grow. There is nothing else for it to do. Even if it's lousy, it is impossible for it to not gain share. This is like comparing the Zune marketshare with the iPod.

Re:Bing is pretty good

[johnlcallaway]

Bing is annoying as hell, and I will never use it on purpose. There are way too many websites that seem to create hover points for every other word in an article, so Bing pops up all the time. Which could also account for their 'increased search results' .. people accidentally getting bing results because of hover points in web pages.

Strange..

[msimm]

Strange right! An advertisement about the growth of Bing trumpeting the growth of Bing! And on an unrelated note, can we stop slashvertising Microsoft shit?

Good

[DesScorp]

Google needs the competition at this point. Google search has become the Windows of search engines.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[BuckaBooBob]

Setting Bing as your default browser?

Hmm.. Are you for real? Bing is a search engine... Firefox/IE/Opera/Safari ect are browsers..

So before your first sentence is complete I have deducted that you have nothing of value to say what so ever since you seem to be unable to differentiate between a browser and a search engine.

Isn't the real issue the base number?

[Suki I]

The report is "Bing Gains Market Share Faster" It is all the way up to 10.7% now. Fine. Google has 65.7%. You can show HUGE increases in your rate of market gain when hardly anybody is looking at you and then a few more look at you. The same number of eyeballs for Google is a small increase. Am I wrong, or did someone cherry pick the most appealing metric for Bing to write a story about?

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[smooth wombat]

And even more so, who actually types in www.bing.com or www.google.com to do a search,

If I had to hazard a guess, I suspect upwards of 93% of people, including me, still type in those addresses.

Why you ask? Force of habit, don't want the extra space of the search box taking up room, don't know that you can usually do a search from the address bar, don't care about the fancy way of doing things, don't have ADD and think they need to shave .29 seconds off their ability to do a search.

Shall I go on?

Re:And another thing

[Digero]

The chart in TFA is tracking search volume of "Microsoft Sites". The MSDN search has always been through Microsoft (Bing or not), so the switch to Bing on MSDN shouldn't affect the search volume through Microsoft sites, assuming the same volume of searches are going through search bar on MSDN. That said, I personally used to use google with "site:msdn.microsoft.com" before MSDN switched to Bing, so in that way, the switch to Bing on MSDN at least brought in a few more searches by me.

Re:Bing is pretty good

[adbge]

I find Bing horribly annoying simply because I anticipate certain results when I enter a phrase into Google, but Bing returns results that I don't want -- simply because I'm so used to what I would get if I Googled it instead.

I am unable to actually critique Bing as a search engine because I'm constantly thrown off by the search results. I'm not sure if Bing simply has an inferior search algorithm, or if it's simply myself equating different with bad.

Re:Look, it's actually not bad

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

This seems to me to be the key issue here: do you know how to search for what you want, or do you not? Do you want a decision engine or a search engine? I'm actually sort of surprised that more hasnt been made of the 'decision engine' business. Microsoft seems pretty up front about their 'we're making this search engine for people who either dont know how or are too lazy to properly seek out the information they want' strategy. And in a way, i actually support this. I was back home over christmas, helpin dad with some internets, and watching him fail to use google properly was really quite painful. he should be using bing. However, I, too, will continue using the search engine that both works and respects my intelligence.