Bing Share Nominally Better than Windows Live
By Ed Oswald | Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 11:45 am
The tech world was aflutter last week as Bing catapulted itself to #2 among all search engines. That fun lasted one day. Now that things have come back to earth, data from analytics firm StatCounter show that Bing is only performing nominally better than Windows Live did.
Before the switchover to Bing, Windows Live in the last week of May averaged a 5-6% share of the market in the US, save for a one day anomaly on May 29 (it hit 12.81% that day). Bing took over on June 1, and generally experienced a good first week, peaking on the 4th as we had reported.
However, since then it has fallen dramatically, and over the last several days, seem to have found a bottom right around 6-7%. So that’s right, all this Bingmania has resulted in basically a overall gain of a percentage point or two in market share.
To be fair, it seems Bing is starting to make a move up again. However, its clear from these results that a significant portion of the Web surfing public tried and then passed on Bing.
It has to be somewhat disheartening to Microsoft that so far Bing has generally fallen on deaf ears. I bet they’re hoping that the $100 million they’re about to spend on advertising isn’t all for naught.
Point of solace for Microsoft however: it does appear that when Bing does gain, its coming at the expense of Google. You could take that this way — that Google searchers may be considering Bing a worthy alternative.
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June 11th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
There are some numbers out there that suggest each ONE percentage point gain is with an additional BILLION dollars. That should keep MS goin’ through these tough times. 😉
June 11th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Microsoft historically throws a lot of money at something hoping it sticks. This is another case of “we don’t have an original idea…so money will fix the problem”
It is going to be another waste of funds…just like hiring Jerry Seinfeld was.
When will they get that simpler is sometimes better and massive amounts of money will not buy you customers? Just look at what they are trying to do with the multiple versions of Windows 7….
June 12th, 2009 at 9:41 am
The success so far of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing depends on which numbers you look at. Different sources claim that Bing is still growing, has lost traffic, or has leveled off. Some say Bing is already ahead of Yahoo, while others say that was temporary. I don’t know which set of figures is true
August 10th, 2009 at 9:14 am
I’ve actually started using Bing as an alternative to Google. Though, the Bing results don’t seem to be quite as good. There’s something about Google that makes it feel like the only option isn’t there? Maybe that will change in the future, though personally I think Google is the future, Helen brainwave entrainment