Did You Google Bing?
Written by Taylor Holsinger (contact - e-mail) -- July 6th, 2009 | Share - Save - E-mailIt’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.
Did you like that post? You'll love these.
- Bing Attracts New Searchers, But So Far Only For a Trial
- June Search Market Share: Bing Shines in a Rough June for Search
- August Search Market Share: Google Still Volume Leader, but Consumers Taking Advantage of Bing Paid Links
- July Search Market Share: Bing Continues to Gain Share but Paid Referrals Flatten Out
- May Search Market Share: Pre-Bing Launch, Sponsored Referrals Dip at MSN/Live
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July 6th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
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.
July 6th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
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…”
July 6th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
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.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:09 am
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.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:33 am
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
July 7th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
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.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:36 am
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.
July 11th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
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.
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