Web search statistics show Bing stagnant, Google growing

Following a press release from ComScore indicating that Microsoft has approached 10% market share with Bing, more comprehensive search statistics indicate that Bing's growth and share of web search is being wildly overstated.

ComScore's October "US Core Search" rankings made headlines in suggesting that Microsoft's Bing, combined with the company's other search properties, have incrementally amassed a significant share of US search, now at 9.9%.

However, ComScore's press release points out in small type that "searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers."

Microsoft doesn't have a big share of the mapping, local directory, and user generated search market. By removing this from its "core" rankings, ComScore greatly inflates Bing's importance, because the vast majority search related to maps, local search, and "user generated video" (why not just say "YouTube") are all owned by Google. Microsoft's own "Soapbox" effort to match Google's YouTube failed and was shut down in August after a three year run.

When looking at more neutral statistics that don't gerrymander figures to arrive at a desired conclusion, the facts are very different.

Net Application's search engine market share figures have been tracking the industry since at least 2000. For October 2009, the latest full month recorded, it gave Microsoft Bing just a 3.49% share of all search globally, along with 0.08% share for MSN Search and 0.01% share for Microsoft Live Search. Yahoo Search took second place with 6.68%, leaving the lion's share for Google at 84.53%.

This establishes the trend AppleInsider reported this summer that despite glowing press releases for Bing, Google keeps eating away more and more of the web search market globally, while Microsoft and Yahoo continue to remain stagnant.

As the chart below shows, in the four years between 2004 and 2008, Google incrementally shifted from having almost 60% share to having a dominating +75% share, while Yahoo fell from 18.5% to 12.7% and Microsoft fell from 14% to 6.3%.

Over the last two years since, Google has continued to gain share while Yahoo's dropped to the current figure of 6.7% and Microsoft's Bing, MSN and Live Search combined amounted to just 3.5% of the global web search market.

65 Comments

ascii

said about 14 years ago

I have been using Bing when booted in to Boot Camp just because it's the default in IE8. But a couple of times I have manually typed in the Google URL in frustration.

I thought after all these years of competition the search services would know each other's tricks and it wouldn't matter which I used, but Bing really is crappier than Google.

ltmp

said about 14 years ago

Is it just me, or does it look like Google's share increased around the time that Bing launched?

bigdaddyp

said about 14 years ago

Hey Prince what is a three run? Was it a three year or three month run? I honestly never even heard of soap box.

camroidv27

said about 14 years ago

Last I checked, Apple has no stance in the web search market. So why is this here?

Anyhow, I gave Bing a go once. Took me on average 5 clicks and one re-wording to get to what I wanted. Google it was usually in the first 3 results of the first page. Bing and decide... to not use Bing!

I like competition, but sadly Bing (One syllable is easier to pronounce than two? Binging instead of Googling? I think that was part of the marketing idea.) didn't bring any competition from what I saw. M$ shouldn't try to enter into all these different markets. They should stick with OSs and Office and Servers. If they focus their resources on one good area, instead of trying to get into all these different markets, then their products will benefit. I feel they are stretching themselves too thin. Both Apple and Google need to be wary of this too as they both are oozing into other markets.

tundraboy

said about 14 years ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by camroidv27

Both Apple and Google need to be wary of this too as they both are oozing into other markets.

Difference is, when Apple oozes into other markets, it's mostly a win. When Microsoft oozes into other markets they're mostly collossal failures and/or bottomless billion dollar money pits. So the same advice is not applicable to both.