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Bing Gaining Market Share Faster

Posted by kdawson on from the maybe-it's-the-chinese-sounding-name dept.

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."

17 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. Of course by smooth+wombat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    1. Re:Of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Like Firefox, Opera and Chrome do with Google? It's not hard to change search engine in IE, btw

    2. Re:Of course by kjart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Of course by Kadin2048 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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    4. Re:Of course by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 5, Informative
      Oh, come on. The first time you run IE8 it prompts you to pick a search provider or to use the default of Bing- and it keeps prompting every time you launch until you make a choice or tell it to go away. It lists Google right there, no need to search for more providers. It really can't be made any easier than that.

      For an existing install, I can't say as I haven't tried it. But it seems odd to me that the first run would have data that a subsequent run would not.

    5. Re:Of course by jhoegl · · Score: 5, Funny

      Like Firefox, Opera and Chrome do with Google? It's not hard to change search engine in IE, btw

      Hey....

      Shut up.

    6. Re:Of course by Androclese · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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 : ...

    7. Re:Of course by adbge · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    8. Re:Of course by recoiledsnake · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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).

      --
      This space for rent.
    9. Re:Of course by God_TM · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Sure... by TrippTDF · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Sure... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You mean like with Google and Firefox?

  3. Bing is pretty good by DogDude · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Bing is actually pretty darn good. They don't have the countless integrated features that Google has, but for good, solid search results, in some cases, Bing returns better results than Google. Where I work, people there have set about half of the desktops' home pages to Bing, with the other half being Google.

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  4. Re:Market Variety by sopssa · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not alternatives, but Scroogle hides your searches among thousands of others (and removes Google's click-tracking javascripts and so on).

  5. Stupid reporting by Anonymusing · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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  6. Contradicting numbers by trazan · · Score: 5, Informative

    This completely contradicts two other reports from the last few days, which has Bing losing market share in December.

    http://searchengineland.com/nielsen-yahoo-bing-down-google-up-in-december-33464

    http://www.hitwise.com/us/press-center/press-releases/search-enginedec2009/

  7. And another thing by Weaselmancer · · Score: 5, Informative

    MSDN is now powered by Bing too. So every windows programmer in the world is now making Bing queries by default. That's got to boost things a bit.

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    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.