Did You Google Bing?

Written by Taylor Holsinger (contact - e-mail) -- July 6th, 2009 | Share - Save - E-mail

It’s now been just over one month since the Kumo shroud fell on March 25 and brand Bing was born. In that first week (5/24 – 5/30) Compete saw 719,390 U.S. visitors. In the launch week that followed, U.S. traffic to Bing.com jumped to 21.1 million visitors, generating a 36% lift in traffic to Microsoft search sites. Last week, (6/21 – 6/27), which witnessed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, Microsoft’s U.S. search audience increased further to 27.1 million, a whopping 58% increase for the Microsoft search audience compared to the week in which brand Bing was announced.

What is also noteworthy, is that in the first week following the announcement of brand Bing, but still prior to the official June 1 launch, 97% of visitors to Bing.com overlapped with Google, compared with only 37% and 2% same time period overlap with Yahoo! and AOL respectively. During launch week, the dramatically larger overlap of Bing Googlers continued, relative to the Bing overlap with Yahoo! and AOL.

The table below shows Bing audience overlap for the weeks both prior and during launch of Bing, together with last week’s Bing audience overlap.

  • 97% of the Bing.com audience overlaps with Google Search in the week prior to launch (5/24 – 5/30).
  • 30% of the Bing.com audience overlaps with Yahoo! Search during Bing’s launch week (5/31 – 6/1).
  • The percent of overlap between the Bing audience with AOL, Google, and Yahoo! has changed little between launch week and last week.

I asked Rich Devine, Director of Search Marketing at ZAAZ, his thoughts on these data. He offered:

“When Microsoft last re-productized their search offering, those we spoke to were adamant that they could compete with Google and win Search in the long run based on the quality and relevancy of search results. I believe their early success with Bing is attributed to the marketing and delivery of a product that is alternative and differentiated, both in terms of interface and results sets. I think Compete data bears this out where we’re seeing tremendous response from users who aren’t necessarily ready to switch engine loyalty – but are willing to compare and consider alternatives. When users search comparatively between Google and Bing – they really will experience and see something different.”

While we can only speculate as to what any of these data really suggest long-term, Bing attracted over 6 million new US consumers to Microsoft search products to experience it for themselves, compared to the prior week’s traffic. The propensity to be interested in (and perhaps aware of) an opportunity to check out a new search experience was far higher among Google searchers than among other searchers. Now the question is whether the Bing experience has translated interest into actual change in search behaviors. We’ll continue tracking this closely.

Share - Save - E-mail


Analyze more domains: + +

Done reading? subscribe: To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via email enter your email address in the box in the right column.

Link to This Post:     


Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.
  1. Mark W.

    Interesting data. The reason I use Google so much is because I don’t like the way the Yahoo and AOL results are displayed. It will be nice to have another alternative.

  2. Darren

    I think these numbers are interesting, however an uptick in an established trend will mean little to the marketplace (imho) long term. I think the telling story will occur 3 to 6 mo after Bing has been on the search market, then the numbers will tell the true story of the usefulness of Bing (and if it is a true competitor to Google). The problem facing Microsoft now is how to supplant the userbase that has used Google and found it incredibly useful for their needs. As the old adage goes “If it isn’t broken…”

  3. Erin

    These numbers strike me as counterintuitive. I would expect the Google searchers to exhibit more engine loyalty than the Yahoo and AOL searchers. (Why? I don’t know. It just seems like the people I know who use Google are really jazzed about Google.) But these numbers suggest that the Google users are willing to look around. I wonder why. Maybe whatever attracted them to Google is still at play–they are users who want to be on the cutting edge and want to know about the new thing. Maybe the people who are still with Yahoo and AOL (that is, who haven’t been seduced by Google) are the true diehards, after all. If Google hasn’t lured them away, nothing will.

  4. Ling

    Seems to me that loyal Google users haven’t really jumped ship. It’s just that there’s more to Bing than just search, and that’s what’s bringing Google users to also use Bing. Bing Travel, for example – Google has nothing comparable. So people who are using Google for travel research may also check out Bing, and then move to Bing Travel, which is where they wanted to go (in addition to Google). So I’d say that Bing has increased the total number of search queries, but hasn’t really stolen anyone’s market share.

  5. Perry

    I too am interested to see if Bing has staying power against Google or is the spike just curious tire kickers. I personally will go with the best search engine(s) and have 0 loyalties

  6. Adam

    Thanks for the insight Taylor!

    Obviously it will be interesting to track this data over time. I find your call out particularly intersting as some early prognosticators proposed that any Bing success would come at Yahoo!’s detriment. I imagine that at this point a huge percentage of those using YHOO or AOL search are the same folk that have their homepage and email set to the respective portals and won’t be inclined to stray.

    It’s great to see some disruption in this space to spur some innovation.

  7. FAD

    I am pleased to see some competition for Google. However, the three biggies (Google, Yahoo and MSN) produce search results that are often very similar to each other. You must do a statistical study to decide which is most “relevant”.

    IMHO if you want truly new ideas try Hakia or DuckDuckGo. They are new and not as finished as the biggies, but their approaches are significantly different and are surprisingly good in many cases. They have great potential if allowed time to mature.

  8. Emily B.

    Google needs something to give it a run for its money (so say I, an exclusive Googler)–I would use Bing to try to prove that I can climb out of a rut, but it would/will need to offer something significantly more useful than my tried-and-tested search engine to win my heart.

  9. Mark harry

    The best alternative to google.com is http://www.azokan.com, it would redirect you to google or you can go to wikipedia, youtube…. very fast and cool way to search

  10. Mark harry

    i mean http://www.azokan.com

  11. ghd Hair Straightener

    Your article was very well written, I am very like it, I wish you

    happy every day!

  12. 上海SEO

    google,baidu seo serves

  13. Online

    Thank you for your article!Early to air jordan women bed and early to rise.

  14. 招商加盟

    Your article was very well

  15. 中国SEO

    best alternative to google.com is http://www.azokan.com, it would redirect you to google or you can go to wikipedia, youtube

  16. GHD straighteners

    GHD IV dark styler
    GHD IV Mk4 Black Straighteners
    GHD IV Mk4 Gold Straighteners
    GHD IV Mk4 Pink Straighteners
    GHD IV Pure styler
    GHD IV Purple styler
    GHD Kiss IV styler
    GHD Pink

  17. 上海ホームページ制作

    shanghai web

  18. hervedressbuy

    herve leger sale
    herve leger dress
    herve leger bandage

  19. Discount Timberland Classic Boots

    It has been rumored that BoA will be featured in Discount timberland shoes on sale’s upcoming compilation album, Shock Value Volume 2. So far there has been two tracklists for the album floating around the net, and it appears that the one with BoA listed might be the more probable tracklist.Although Timberland has denied the validity of many of the tracks reported, it has been confirmed that quite a few of the tracks and collaborations listed have been confirmed to exist.In other news, BoA and Sean Garrett has confirmed "Energetic" will be their next single at the MTV VMAJ.

    Jonas Brothers & Rihanna – Discount Timberland Classic Boots For all you Blackberry Storm users if you didn’t know already Timbaland has exclusive remixes through Verizon Wireless Vcast. Timberland Custom Boots on sale is also set to release "Shock Value Vol.2" later this summer! Here I have Timbaland remixes of the Jonas Brothers "Tonight" and Rihanna’s "Rehab". These are only exclusively sold to Blackberry Storm users and only available for limited time. I love his spin on the Jonas Brothers track so Deff check it out, Enjoy!!


Have something to say? Leave a Comment

Get the comments RSS feed, instant notification of new comments

Latest Blog Posts:


Feb 9: Truth in Engineering… and Marketing
Feb 8: Doppelganger Week Turns To Urban Dictionary
Feb 5: The Role of Search in the Online Deposits Market
Feb 4: Conan vs. Leno: Coco Must Go
Feb 3: Oscar Mayer Brings Good Mood
Feb 2: Compete Ranks December’s Top Food and Cooking Sites
Feb 1: Travel Industry Rebound Based on Site Traffic: The Other Side of the Coin
Jan 29: The Nexus One – Google’s Next (But Likely Not Final) Frontier
Jan 29: Search is Integral to Driving a Wave of Cruise Bookings
Jan 28: Compete’s CMO on Audience Insights, Not Audience Measurement
Jan 27: Consumers Slow to Embrace Social Media As Shopping Resource
Jan 26: Online Food Fight: Scripps vs. Cablevision
Jan 25: List of Top 50 Websites in December 2009
Jan 22: Setting My Sights on Site-to-Store
Jan 21: Compete Now Offers Audience Insights!
Jan 14: Can shipping costs affect online sales?
Jan 11: My 10 year MSN Hotmail anniversary and what it means to Gmail
Jan 8: World War 3G
Jan 7: A look under the hood of Ad Impact
Jan 5: Smartphone Owners Now Spending More from Handset, but Poor Site Functionality Is a Turn-off