AfterDawn: News

Bing continues to take search engine market share

Microsoft's latest search engine incarnation Bing continues to gain search engine market share, according to October comScore numbers.

From September, the search engine gained over five percent, jumping from 9.4 share to 9.9 percent, mainly at the expense of Yahoo, which fell from 18.8 percent to 18 percent.



Clear leader Google gained 1 percent to move from 64.9 percent share to 65.4.

Minor players Ask and AOL remained unchanged at 3.9 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively.

Bing gained for the fifth straight month, backed by a $100-million dollar ad campaign and promotion by Microsoft.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 17 Nov 2009 15:04

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• 17 comments

• 21Q

  It most likely has to do with the ad campaign. I have to admit that the commercials are very entertaining, but never enticing enough to make me visit the site. It's like with freecreditreport.com. After they got catchy ads their market share went through the roof.

  17.11.2009 16:24 #1

• manrod

  Would this have anything to do with the mass advertising campaign going on on Microsoft related websites?
  
  Hhhhmmmmmmmmmm...

  17.11.2009 16:40 #2

• emugamer

  Ad campaign and browser hijacking.

  17.11.2009 20:28 #3

• bomber991

  Originally posted by 21Q: It most likely has to do with the ad campaign. I have to admit that the commercials are very entertaining, but never enticing enough to make me visit the site. It's like with freecreditreport.com. After they got catchy ads their market share went through the roof.The only ad that got me to try bing was when they were showing off how bing works for searching for airline tickets. I don't fly often, but it's good to have a place to search for plane tickets where you don't have to wait 5 minutes after clicking "Search for my ticket".
  
  Other than that, there's no reason to go to bing. That plane ticket commercial was a good one though, it shows something that bing can do that other search engines can't.

  17.11.2009 22:13 #4

• Hopium

  its because win7 users are getting it as default search provider in ie8 they use it once to find firefox or opera and close ie forever and in returns pumps bings query count :D

  17.11.2009 23:36 #5

• emugamer

  Originally posted by Hopium: its because win7 users are getting it as default search provider in ie8 they use it once to find firefox or opera and close ie forever and in returns pumps bings query count :DThat is possible, but it is also possible that people who buy stock PC's from Dell and Best Buy default to it since it's been packaged with ie as a standard. Either way, I doubt that there is a large number of people in that percentage that are fluent in other alternatives and who decided to switch over. Maybe a handful.

  18.11.2009 12:04 #6

• xnmalletx

  Originally posted by Hopium: its because win7 users are getting it as default search provider in ie8 they use it once to find firefox or opera and close ie forever and in returns pumps bings query count :DWell Firefox uses Google as default, is that why people use Google, I don't think so.

  18.11.2009 15:01 #7

• emugamer

  Quote:Originally posted by Hopium: its because win7 users are getting it as default search provider in ie8 they use it once to find firefox or opera and close ie forever and in returns pumps bings query count :DWell Firefox uses Google as default, is that why people use Google, I don't think so.Google has emerged as the popular search engine over the years because it has become the better alternative to what was available at the time. It has nothing to do with Firefox. Google was growing before firefox came on the scene. It just so happens that Firefox adopted Google.
  
  People use Firefox to avoid IE like the plague.

  18.11.2009 15:30 #8

• xnmalletx

  Quote:Quote:Originally posted by Hopium: its because win7 users are getting it as default search provider in ie8 they use it once to find firefox or opera and close ie forever and in returns pumps bings query count :DWell Firefox uses Google as default, is that why people use Google, I don't think so.Google has emerged as the popular search engine over the years because it has become the better alternative to what was available at the time. It has nothing to do with Firefox. Google was growing before firefox came on the scene. It just so happens that Firefox adopted Google.
  
  People use Firefox to avoid IE like the plague.Well that was the point i was trying to make. Why is it that people say that all of bing's market share is because of IE default. If you are trying to make that argument i guess you could say that because bing's market share is growing more people are using IE but we all know that isn't happening. I believe that about 1% of their market share is because of the default browser on IE, the other 9% is their clever marketing campaign. I personally prefer Google because of its speed and many results but I try to mix it up every now and then and try yahoo, ask, and bing out.

  18.11.2009 16:41 #9

• bluedogs

  As stated above. Of course it is going to increase. I have Win7 with IE8 and it is forced onto you. I used IE to download FF and that was it except now IE has tied itself into any link I click on in my email. Shiets me to tears. IE 6 was better, at least I was able to save websites for off line browsing.
  
  Bing is a useless search engine anyway.

  19.11.2009 08:27 #10

• Mez

  Many users DO use the default. It is beyond them to switch defaults and they are not very demanding. These persons rarely use search engines much because if they did, they wouldn't settle for the default unless it was what they wanted. I suspect if they counted hits the stats would be far different. Google would be closer to 90% and Bing less than 1%. I did not like Bing at all when I used it by mistake. It returned garbage instead of useful hits.

  19.11.2009 08:31 #11

• emugamer

  Quote:Quote:Quote:Originally posted by Hopium: its because win7 users are getting it as default search provider in ie8 they use it once to find firefox or opera and close ie forever and in returns pumps bings query count :DWell Firefox uses Google as default, is that why people use Google, I don't think so.Google has emerged as the popular search engine over the years because it has become the better alternative to what was available at the time. It has nothing to do with Firefox. Google was growing before firefox came on the scene. It just so happens that Firefox adopted Google.
  
  People use Firefox to avoid IE like the plague.Well that was the point i was trying to make. Why is it that people say that all of bing's market share is because of IE default. If you are trying to make that argument i guess you could say that because bing's market share is growing more people are using IE but we all know that isn't happening. I believe that about 1% of their market share is because of the default browser on IE, the other 9% is their clever marketing campaign. I personally prefer Google because of its speed and many results but I try to mix it up every now and then and try yahoo, ask, and bing out.My Company uses IE by default. Our PC's are locked down from making any changes or installing anything. So when I accidentally mistype a web address, I get automatically redirected to Bing. There are over 1,000 PC's here. Everything we use is default. My browser of choice is Google. I despise the fact that whenever I mis-type a web address (which happens occasionally), MS marks that as a Bing hit and I've contributed to their market share.

  19.11.2009 10:40 #12

• xtago

  Originally posted by Hopium: its because win7 users are getting it as default search provider in ie8 they use it once to find firefox or opera and close ie forever and in returns pumps bings query count :DYep sure is.
  
  And it's a right pain to change it out in IE8 plus win7 itself, I wouldn't be surprised if a court case pops up due to this, it's a bit like IE becoming number 1 browser, though only after it's was put into windows as a core OS product not because it was a better browser.

  19.11.2009 15:49 #13

• bw5011

  Quote:Quote:Originally posted by Hopium: its because win7 users are getting it as default search provider in ie8 they use it once to find firefox or opera and close ie forever and in returns pumps bings query count :DWell Firefox uses Google as default, is that why people use Google, I don't think so.Google has emerged as the popular search engine over the years because it has become the better alternative to what was available at the time. It has nothing to do with Firefox. Google was growing before firefox came on the scene. It just so happens that Firefox adopted Google.
  
  People use Firefox to avoid IE like the plague.
  Firefox has more holes than IE and IE has been way better than Firefox since IE7. Google use to be my search engine of choice until I started using Bing. Bing is a great search engine and I dont have to weave my way through the paid ads to find what I am looking for. Google does a lot of brower hi-jacking so most people that see google toolbar and google desktop all of a sudden on their computer just leaves them. Most people are not computer savvy like the people here. Google is still good, but I perfer Bing now and tell all my customers about it as well. Alot of people dislike Microsoft so they will not give it a fair shot. And dont even get me started on "Bing Cashback"!

  19.11.2009 16:36 #14

• bluedogs

  Quote:Firefox has more holes than IE and IE has been way better than Firefox since IE7. Google use to be my search engine of choice until I started using Bing. Bing is a great search engine and I dont have to weave my way through the paid ads to find what I am looking for. Google does a lot of brower hi-jacking so most people that see google toolbar and google desktop all of a sudden on their computer just leaves them. Most people are not computer savvy like the people here. Google is still good, but I perfer Bing now and tell all my customers about it as well. Alot of people dislike Microsoft so they will not give it a fair shot. And dont even get me started on "Bing Cashback"!I disagree, Firefox is more secure, I have more problems using IE than FF . At least with Google if I do a search for my website (searching within Australia only) it's the first onlist, with bing it does not even come up in the first 10 pages and they are pretty much websites from overseas. I don't have to wade through any paid adds. Google has never hi-jacked my browser, ever but IE keeps trying to set my search engine from Google to Bing all the time thats why I refuse to use it again. If you had a house built from a builder and it turned out shoddy work would you get him in to build a bungalow.... no of course not so why would people want to give Bing a "fair shot".
  
  EDIT - After seeing response below which is a repeat of post before. Must a Microsoft nut.

  19.11.2009 17:05 #15

• bw5011

  Quote:Quote:Originally posted by Hopium: its because win7 users are getting it as default search provider in ie8 they use it once to find firefox or opera and close ie forever and in returns pumps bings query count :DWell Firefox uses Google as default, is that why people use Google, I don't think so.Google has emerged as the popular search engine over the years because it has become the better alternative to what was available at the time. It has nothing to do with Firefox. Google was growing before firefox came on the scene. It just so happens that Firefox adopted Google.
  
  People use Firefox to avoid IE like the plague.
  Firefox has more holes than IE and IE has been way better than Firefox since IE7. Google use to be my search engine of choice until I started using Bing. Bing is a great search engine and I dont have to weave my way through the paid ads to find what I am looking for. Google does a lot of brower hi-jacking so most people that see google toolbar and google desktop all of a sudden on their computer just leaves them. Most people are not computer savvy like the people here. Google is still good, but I perfer Bing now and tell all my customers about it as well. Alot of people dislike Microsoft so they will not give it a fair shot. And dont even get me started on "Bing Cashback"!

  19.11.2009 17:05 #16

• Gneiss1

  How much of its new market share comes from the trojan horse that was installed on my Linux machine running Firefox? Not knowing it was from Microsoft, I added it to my search engine choices and visited it. After that, my search-engine menu opened on its own, for me to select Bing. When I didn't, advertisements popped all over my desktop, with Bing borders.
  
  Had to delete it from my selections, disable DOM storage, and disable JavaScript, which pains me. I can also not bank or shop online until I rebuild the computer.
  
  Thank you, Bing.

  20.11.2009 01:30 #17