AfterDawn: News

Bing gains larger share of U.S. searches

Microsoft's Bing search engine took more market share from Google Inc. during August, according to new data. A research note from JPMorgan cited data from industry tracker comScore to show that Microsoft's search share had grown from 8.9 percent in July, to 9.3 percent in August in the United States.

The Bing search engine was launched by the Redmond giant in June 2009.



Google's share of the search market in the United States in August only declined by 0.01 percent - standing at about 64.6 percent - whereas the overall U.S. search market volume increased 15.5% from July. The U.S. search market volume increased 19.2 percent compared to August 2008.

Yahoo Inc. took second place behind Google, with a market share of 19.3 percent, almost unchanged from July.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 21 Sep 2009 22:15

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• 11 comments

• emugamer

  How many of those hits are mistaken or accidental. We have IE at work. I have no control over that. I accidentally mistyped a web address and was directed immediately to Bing to find the correct address. Kinda pissed me off. It made me fell like they were forcing it on me. I would have rather seen the standard error page. Not sure if this feature was installed in a recent Windows update, which I also have no control over. Every once in a while, IE will try to use Bing to correct my mistakes. I always go back to Google, just on principle.
  
  Not sure how MS expects to gain the edge on Google. The name alone has infiltrated pop culture from movies to TV shows to books to music. Even politicians joke about "googling." (Didn't Bush use "the google?") Popularity doesn't transate to the better browser, but it sure helps. I guess the only way to start is to try to force it on the unsuspecting public.

  22.9.2009 12:08 #1

• rashadow

  Honestly, I rarely use it, but from what I've seen and hear...bing isn't all that bad a search engine. There's gonna be a lot of automatic hate, I know, cuz I automatically hated myself. But Bing has been showing innovation and large amounts of usability...
  
  Who knows - I doubt they could ever take the place of Google, but there's still a lot of money to be made being #2 :P
  
  Mashable even had an article on some stuff that bing can do that google can't, or something like that: http://mashable.com/2009/09/19/bing-extras/
  
  I mean, there's no reason to not like bing really. There's always room for innovation and competition. If bing can do things that google can't, that would only force google to get even better, right?
  
  And there's nothing wrong with having an alternate search engine neither. I'm probably gonna be reppin google for life, but that doesn't mean I won't try something different depending on the circumstances and situations. I'm damn sure trying to get bing to come crawl my damn site :))
  
  *links again removed by moderator - this best not happen again...*

  22.9.2009 13:46 #2

• xnonsuchx

  Originally posted by emugamer: How many of those hits are mistaken or accidental. We have IE at work. I have no control over that. I accidentally mistyped a web address and was directed immediately to Bing to find the correct address. Kinda pissed me off. It made me fell like they were forcing it on me. I would have rather seen the standard error page. Not sure if this feature was installed in a recent Windows update, which I also have no control over. Every once in a while, IE will try to use Bing to correct my mistakes. I always go back to Google, just on principle.
  
  Not sure how MS expects to gain the edge on Google. The name alone has infiltrated pop culture from movies to TV shows to books to music. Even politicians joke about "googling." (Didn't Bush use "the google?") Popularity doesn't transate to the better browser, but it sure helps. I guess the only way to start is to try to force it on the unsuspecting public.
  Did you set Google as the default IE search option (including the Not Found webpage search)? My biggest pet peeve are programs that automatically launch IE (e.g. registration/update checking/add-ons/etc.) despite what your default browser is.

  22.9.2009 16:05 #3

• emugamer

  Quote:Originally posted by emugamer: How many of those hits are mistaken or accidental. We have IE at work. I have no control over that. I accidentally mistyped a web address and was directed immediately to Bing to find the correct address. Kinda pissed me off. It made me fell like they were forcing it on me. I would have rather seen the standard error page. Not sure if this feature was installed in a recent Windows update, which I also have no control over. Every once in a while, IE will try to use Bing to correct my mistakes. I always go back to Google, just on principle.
  
  Not sure how MS expects to gain the edge on Google. The name alone has infiltrated pop culture from movies to TV shows to books to music. Even politicians joke about "googling." (Didn't Bush use "the google?") Popularity doesn't transate to the better browser, but it sure helps. I guess the only way to start is to try to force it on the unsuspecting public.
  Did you set Google as the default IE search option (including the Not Found webpage search)? My biggest pet peeve are programs that automatically launch IE (e.g. registration/update checking/add-ons/etc.) despite what your default browser is.No. And I don't care to. It always defaulted to the page error screen. And it wasn't like I was trying to browse. I mis-typed the url address. If I type "www.afterdan.com/news" by mistake, I don't need a search engine. I already know where I want to go. My problem is that IE was automatically changed to default to Bing without me knowing. I have no interest in messing with IE. It's bad enough that I'm using IE 6 and can't access certain content (like I said, beyond my control - all workstations are locked down with uber admin rights so that almost nothing can be changed withought proper authorization).
  
  I'm all for innovation, but I think it's rather sneaky to slip Bing into IE. I'll take it upon myself to check out Bing on my own time if I ever feel the desire to do so.

  22.9.2009 16:26 #4

• jookycola

  I say hijacked their way to bigger gains as well. I use Firefox but when i go to use Google search in the upper right hand corner whatever i type it gets hijacked about 3 letters in and is automatically sent to the Bing search bar. Pissed off i usually just add the 3 first letters of my search to the Bing search bar rather than re-type it.
  
  But lately i've grown so angry over the hijacking i have no problem just copy & pasting the rest of my search from Bing back to the Google search bar out of spite. I won't use Bing now because i consider it adware/spyware IMO. Anything that hijacks your actions on a browser IMO is a malware. I don't care if it's Microsoft, it's just dishonest business practice. If Google chrome did this to Bing they'd sue Google in a heart beat.

  22.9.2009 16:41 #5

• xnonsuchx

  Originally posted by emugamer: I'm all for innovation, but I think it's rather sneaky to slip Bing into IE. I'll take it upon myself to check out Bing on my own time if I ever feel the desire to do so.
  Well, they didn't really "sneak[ily]...slip Bing into IE." MSN Search had long been the default in IE and MSN Search is now Bing, so it basically stayed with whatever the default was.

  22.9.2009 22:32 #6

• xnonsuchx

  Originally posted by jookycola: I say hijacked their way to bigger gains as well. I use Firefox but when i go to use Google search in the upper right hand corner whatever i type it gets hijacked about 3 letters in and is automatically sent to the Bing search bar. Pissed off i usually just add the 3 first letters of my search to the Bing search bar rather than re-type it.
  
  But lately i've grown so angry over the hijacking i have no problem just copy & pasting the rest of my search from Bing back to the Google search bar out of spite. I won't use Bing now because i consider it adware/spyware IMO. Anything that hijacks your actions on a browser IMO is a malware. I don't care if it's Microsoft, it's just dishonest business practice. If Google chrome did this to Bing they'd sue Google in a heart beat.
  How is it hijacking? I mostly use Firefox and haven't seen anything remotely resembling what you describe.

  22.9.2009 22:35 #7

• kyo28

  One word: CASHBACK
  
  If you access certain participating online shops through Bing, you can get a 4% discount on your purchase. A lot of people are using Bing in that way to lower the costs of their purchases.
  
  Indirectly, Microsoft is paying Internet users to use their search engine, although I doubt this will have a lasting effect. All the people I've heard that used Bing for the cashback system, use it only for that and keep using the other search engine(s) they're used to.

  23.9.2009 03:18 #8

• emugamer

  Quote:Originally posted by emugamer: I'm all for innovation, but I think it's rather sneaky to slip Bing into IE. I'll take it upon myself to check out Bing on my own time if I ever feel the desire to do so.
  Well, they didn't really "sneak[ily]...slip Bing into IE." MSN Search had long been the default in IE and MSN Search is now Bing, so it basically stayed with whatever the default was.Not my IE. My point was, how do you gauge how much market share you are really gaining when you make your search engine the default. How much market share did MSN searh have?

  23.9.2009 05:51 #9

• bam431

  ARGGH Bing

  23.9.2009 09:10 #10

• Mez

  Well, I used Bing once because M$ had altered my default search site. I was deeply impressed by the level of their incompetency. What a foul moronic peice of crap. I was in a hurry to get a map. The map was out of date.

  25.9.2009 15:32 #11