I'm having a hard time understanding the significance of this news given the Bing / Yahoo.com partnership (Bing started powering Yahoo.com search in late August). Going forward Bing's success will be measured in terms of its performance vis-a-vis Google, so what's the relevance that it overtook Yahoo in market share?
Most users aren't aware that Yahoo is powered by Bing, so the fact that Bing overtook Yahoo in search shows that Bing has gained (or Yahoo has lost) significant ground. This isn't searches powered by Bing, but searches actually on Bing.com.
But still, why is it relevant or meaningful to compare the market share of Bing.com vs Yahoo.com since the two are now in a formal partnership going forward? Isn't the central issue: Bing + Yahoo vs Google?
You're conflating brand with technology. Yes, the back end is the same, but the point is that the Bing-branded site is now ahead of the Yahoo!-branded site.
Bing gained market share at the expense of Yahoo. Google's market share remained flat for the year. The net effect is that Bing + Yahoo has not gained ground on Google. So back to my original question, what is the strategic significance of Bing overtaking Yahoo in market share?
searches through Yahoo.com don't generate any revenue for Microsoft do they? Ie they show Yahoo ads, not ones that give Microsoft $$? I could be wrong about the deal specifics though.
Also, Microsoft doesn't really want people searching through Yahoo.com, in a few years time they could power their results through Google and Microsoft wouldn't be better off. They want brand recognition for Bing, so gaining market share for Bing itself is better for them.
That's good for BING, only 52% to go. (well, actually more like 26% to achieve parity).
I don't see how google can go up 1% / month and go up 1% / year at the same time.
Bing growing 30% per year and two percent per month means that they're already flattening out though.
In the article they note that since BING now powers Yahoo! search since August that BING actually has a marketshare that is roughly 26% instead of the 14% it has on its own domain.
Does anyone else think it's weird that we make up artificial goals for some company, so we feel like we can tell it what to do or make a comment?
Like here we're talking about the assumption that Bing wants to knock google out of search or something, rather than have a successful, competitive product. Who says that's their plan?
Microsoft is 'on the record' for targeting Google with BING, in fact they specified during the launch that BING was specifically created to challenge google.
I'm curious to know who "small fry" is. DuckDuckGo? ISPs?
That's significant traffic share even if it's split between several second tier search engines.
Heh, I thought I could find a niche search engine I could advertise on that isn't saturated with competitors but it looks like I'll have to wait for ddg to start accepting ads.
Search.com: google
Ask.com: google
Aol: google
altavista: yahoo
naiver, baidu, yandex are local search engines.
It's amazing how much the search market in the US has consolidated. You would think with the declining cost of computing power someone out there would be building their own index.
It's also interesting that cuil doesn't appear in your stats at all.
Free startup idea: Build a niche search engine covering a curated list of sites(like google custom search but with value adds like ddg). Sort of like what blog search engines are doing, but in another area.
For ddg to be of any use to you though, you'd have to have sufficient searches in your keywords of interest that it would be worth their while to take your money.
Or you'd have to go overbroad.
Cuil is dead, they've tried to re-invent themselves in april as an encyclopedia, I think they must have missed the memo about WikiPedia's continued success.
I agree: these numbers just don't add up. Where are the sites that get 35%+ of their search traffic from Bing to balance out the plethora of sites that get 85%+ of their traffic from Google? I haven't heard of any.
What's the breakdown on browser usage for visitors to your site?
Every site attracts a different demographic of visitors, so you'd expect the browser usage and search engine usage patterns to change accordingly. Younger and more technologically adept users tend to use firefox/chrome/safari more than average and tend to use google more than average, that might explain what you see with your site.
Hat's off to Microsoft on this one - they've earned it.
I don't use Bing for my day to day search but I've used their travel search and it's not too bad. It's definitely no Hipmunk, but it's clean, minimal and pretty snappy.
They've made some effort to take a dull product, make it useful, improve its design and differentiate it from the competition. Yeah, the logo is hideous and embarrassing. Yeah, they've also spent a lot of cash on the advertising.
In the end, though, they've expended more effort in making their search product worth using than Yahoo has recently. So bravo.
Meanwhile: Boy, has Yahoo just lost its fighting spirit or what? What are they doing over there? There's never any interesting news from their corner. Stuck in the mud. They don't even own their search results or PPC product anymore. It's a shame, they've got a good and trusted brand.
Yahoo, within the last five years especially, seemed to fall victim to the economics of the search engine space. That is, they failed to properly differentiate their product in any meaningful way and never once had a very strong focus on the experience of search. Web search just became too important and they were relegated to continually play catch-up while Microsoft crafted their strategy which, from this bit of news, seemed to have been fairly effective.
For sure. For a while there, I tried it as my default. I came back to Google for the long tails on my obscure coding error searches, but until the recent Google revamp, I would go back to Bing specifically for image searches.
Also, I still use Bing for certain, ahem, less savory searches. They have Google beat for that. I think they optimize for it, whereas Google has stated that they don't key on it either way.
Either way, shaking up the search landscape is a good thing for all of us even if you never touch Bing. Google has definitely been forced back to innovate their search UX since Bing has come out (Image search, Instant, reformatting the results screen, etc.). We all win in that scenario.
Bing has a tough battle especially because most people (including me) equate the notion of a comprehensive search result for a query to what Google produces for that query. That is expected considering we have used it for so long.
Bing is my default search engine because I'm paranoid about Google's tracking practices. In my experience, I still see cases where I do not find (all results, enough results, related results, etc) what I want on Bing and then I try Google and find it.
So, does Bing finally allow restricting your search results to specific period? The lack of this crucial feature was why I wouldn't even bother using it, and it still doesn't seem to be available (I just had a quick look out of curiosity).