Bing Gets a Modest Lift in First Month

By Miguel Helft
Bing Bing’s gains appear to have come at the expense of Yahoo, which saw its market share drop to 19.6 percent, from 20.1 percent in May.

Most analysts believe that Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, is off to a solid start, with results that are close to matching Google’s in relevance, a design that resonates with some consumers and a good brand. If nothing else, the release of Bing earned the beleaguered software giant, a perennial underdog in search, some respect.

But how well did Bing do in its first month, when the new search engine was backed by a huge ad campaign and media blitz?

Bing’s debut was decent, but definitely not great.

Audience measuring firm comScore said Wednesday that Microsoft’s share of the American search market inched up to 8.4 percent in June, from 8 percent in May. That is a good one-month lift. It could be termed great if Microsoft can sustain that rate of growth in coming months. But for perspective, consider that Bing’s June market share is still lower than Microsoft’s share of search in January (8.5 percent) or in June 2008 (9.2 percent).

Bing’s gains appear to have come at the expense of Yahoo, which saw its market share drop to 19.6 percent, from 20.1 percent in May. Google’s share remained flat at 65 percent.

Just about everyone expected Bing to show some gains. One month, of course, does not a trend make.

“While the data indicates a very modest near-term bounce, we will be watching closely to see if any query pickup is sustainable,” Christa Quarles, an analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners, wrote in a note to investors.

Douglas Anmuth, an analyst with Barclays Capital, said that Bing’s gains were less than expected.

“While the share gain is positive for Microsoft, and Bing was the only one of the 3 large search engines to increase queries [from month to month], we had expected Bing share to come in between 10-11%. As a result, we believe the search data is a slight positive for both Google & Yahoo, and it should serve as a sigh of relief to some investors who were concerned about the early impact of Bing. Bing’s gains did come virtually all from Yahoo, but the overall impact was still less than anticipated.”

Benjamin Schachter, of Broadpoint AmTech, said:

“The slight uptick for Bing does not come as a surprise. The more important question is whether Microsoft can sustain any real momentum and, if so, will Bing impact the longer-term competitive dynamic for search advertising, as well as the possibility for a Microsoft/Yahoo tie-up?”

Comments are no longer being accepted.

JD July 15, 2009 · 1:54 pm

I’ve been playing with Bing and Google and so far I am unimpressed. Bing seems to consistently come up with fewer results, but not more relevant results. In their respective product searches, neither does a good job of identifying multiple listings for the same item and categorizing them. Bing seems less cluttered but when you look harder you’ll see that’s just because it misses a lot.

I do find that, for some areas, the aerial photos available on Bing maps are better than Google maps. But not everywhere. The aerial view on Bing can serve the same purpose as street view on Google, but not as zoomed in. So I’m jumping back and forth between the two.

And neither really makes any attempt to filter out the junk sites that are just chock full of ads with some random filler or text lifted directly out of Wikipedia. Right now that is my main complaint with search engines. I’ve started playing with another search engine, //www.duckduckgo.com, which does filter them out — you guys at Bing and Google should catch up on this, because it makes a huge difference in how fast you can find a *meaningful* result from a search.

David Snow July 15, 2009 · 4:49 pm

As a web master I track stats for my site //www.AgingSafely.com. I had been tracking the percent of visits that came from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (MSN + Live) via Google Analytics. June was the first month that Bing replaced Live.

My combined Microsoft search stats (Bing + MSN) went down from 8% to 6%. Google went from 74% to 78%, and Yahoo went from 14% to 13%.

While one month doesn’t make a trend, it is a starting point. Aging Safely’s web stats are located at //www.agingsafely.com/web_services/web_stats.aspx

Regards,

DaveS

Larry July 15, 2009 · 5:26 pm

I have to disagree with the analyses that say such performance was expected, given the big promos, etc. In the past, relaunches by Microsoft, Yahoo, and even smaller outfits have not even moved the needle. Taking on Google is a monumental task, and this time results seem to be a bit better than past efforts.

Ed O July 15, 2009 · 5:53 pm

Could the uptick been attributed to the release of the iPhone? Me and some of my friends visited Bing.com just to visit the Bing Shopping site. In the week before the iPhone 3G S release, the site was promoting a 35% discount on any purchase via the AT&T web site. I was able to purchase a brand spanking new 32GB iPhone for $299 and received a Bing Cashback award of $104.65. Sweet!

Jane Stone July 16, 2009 · 12:54 am

I’ve been typing in keywords daily for my site //www.pointbanner.com on both Bing and Google and I must say Bing seems to be providing much more accurate results. Both search engine have what is called “Webmaster Tools” which measure the site’s crawler configuration, broken links etc. Bing listed over 100 incoming links to the site, though Google only measured 4 incoming links. I don’t know if Google is just slow, but I’m starting to believe Microsoft finally has a winner in it’s online division.

Gareth July 16, 2009 · 12:55 pm

It seems that whenever I come to the N.Y. Times technology page lately, I see a story glorifying ‘Bing,’ from David Pogue’s far-too-generous review, to continued reports of the search engine’s apparent strength and viability. Today we have another one, representing a near complete disconnect between the Times and the technology community, where the conventional wisdom has been that Bing features some pleasing bells and whistles, but as an actual search engine, it falls far short of the mark. Because, that is actually the case, and reader after reader leaves this observation in comments after each such article.

My question is: why has the Times decided to relentlessly promote what would otherwise be a non-story – Microsoft’s transparent re-branding of its search engine?

Walt July 20, 2009 · 11:36 pm

My litmus test is to switch default search to a particular engine and see how long it takes for me to grow tired of a particular service and switch back to Google. I switched to Bing.com on day one and have not switched back. I’d say Microsoft has done a great job.

Brett July 24, 2009 · 1:36 am

The more the better the refinements to a product. Looking at the actual results, I get 100 pages of broken links and irrelevant info on Google, while Bing just displays the relevant search results by latest date first. And in my field, this is very much relevant. Looking at stats counter data, I believe the marketing by Microsoft is paying off as Bing shows a steady increase along with Yahoo while there is a declining trend to Google. The next vital question is will Bing survive without marketing?

Also, Microsoft appears to be cheaper to advertise than Google as they use a different dipstick to measure actual visits and sales. Clicking on an ad is not exactly revenue generating.