Fri 12th of February, filed under SEO
Search market wins for Bing
Microsoft's search business is celebrating after new figures showed Bing is growing on both sides of the Atlantic.
According to the latest figures from digital marketing analysts comScore, Microsoft's self-styled 'decision engine' claimed an 11.3 per cent share of the US search sector in January 2010. To put this into context, it is a month-on-month increase of 0.6 per cent. Over in the UK, meanwhile, web trend tracker HitWise recently reported that Microsoft accounted for 3.07 per cent of all searches in January – a 0.18 per cent monthly rise.
However, Google remains the dominant player in both markets. Despite a 0.3 per cent monthly drop, the search engine handled 65.4 per cent of all US queries. And Google actually grew 0.94 per cent in the UK, meaning it is now used for 89.68 per cent of all searches.
Bing builds on publicity blitz
Bing was launched amid a blaze of publicity in June 2009. A direct successor to MSN Live Search, Microsoft reportedly set aside £60.89 million on marketing and advertising alone. The search portal has been widely praised for its integration of results from social media sites like Twitter and computational engine Wolfram|Alpha. It has also attracted plaudits for its design – for example, giving greater prominence to PPC marketing ads and related search terms.
Rachel Holce, online marketing assistant at Manchester SEO agency theEword, believes Bing is on the right track. "Bing is a growing search engine and it's much simpler to use than Google. The downside is that it doesn't yet provide the same quality of results but I think that Microsoft will get there eventually. Google is developing so many other products that there's a real danger it will take its eye off the ball for search."
Posted by Richard Frost
