Newsletter Archives

• Google’s US search market share increases, but the rules changed

  Posted on October 15, 2010 at 08:47 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Last month I wrote about Bing stealing Yahoo search market share, and explained why that didn’t mean much: as of August 24, the Bing engine effectively replaced the Yahoo search engine, so even if you see Yahoo on the screen, the results and the marketing oomph go to Microsoft.

  This month, comScore reports an important change. According to their just-released report, Google’s U.S. market share went up from 65.4% in August to 66.1% in September. At the same time, Bing/Yahoo declined from 28.5 to 27.9%.

  While the numbers seem impressive, you have to take them with more than a dash of salt. comScore changed the way it counts searches, in response to Google’s new Instant Search technology (which some wags note isn’t all that new, but I digress).

  As Cameron Meierhofer on the comScore blog explains,

  [T]he comScore panel provides visibility into all events that a user is conducting and all the HTTP calls associated with the user’s actions. Based on this insight, we have developed a priority scoring system that allows us to identify search results with explicit user action and interstitial results with a sufficiently long pause to suggest some level of implicit engagement.

  If that sounds like a situation just begging to mess up search site usage scores, you’re right. In the end, comScore punted, assigning an arbitrary time-out period of three seconds, “Query result pages without explicit user action, but with a pause of at least 3 seconds, are considered as indicating ‘implicit’ engagement and will count towards Total Core Search.”

  As a dyed-in-the-wool curmudgeon, I have to wonder out loud if comScore chose that three second threshhold before or after they saw the statistics for September.

  Any way, it’s a new race from this point on, and it’ll be interesting to see how Google and Microsoft fare. We won’t really be able to compare apples to apples until the October results are out.

  And, of course, the really important numbers in the long run are for mobile search. But that’s another story.

   

  Other Bing, Google, Search, Yahoo

• Bing at 10.7 percent and growing fast

  Posted on September 19, 2009 at 11:02 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Cnet News reports that Microsoft’s new emphasis on search is paying off. In August, Bing’s market share is pegged at 10.7%. Of course you need to take the numbers with a big grain of salt, but the fact is that Microsoft’s in a very strong position to get Bing going – fast.

  In August, Google increased to 64% of the market, and Yahoo fell to 16%. Makes  you wonder if MS is having second thoughts about its pursuit of Yahoo.

  Regardless, Microsoft is going to keep chomping up market share, simply because Internet Explorer 8 (and, thus, Wiundows 7) use Bing as the default search engine. Regardless of the technical merits, simple apathy counts for much.

   

  Other Bing, Google, Yahoo Search

• Yahoo gets Binged

  Posted on July 29, 2009 at 21:00 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  As expected, Microsoft and Yahoo just issued a joint announcement that explains how Microsoft will provide the search engine and Yahoo will sell the ads in the brave new world of second place search.

  Details here.

  Microsoft News Bing, Microhoo, Microsoft, Yahoo

• Bing vs Live Search

  Posted on June 1, 2009 at 12:42 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Bing just went, uh, live. (Thanks, Andy.)

  I decided to compare Bing with Live search results. Looked up the word “gar” – the name of a fish. (I just saw a school of gar in an estuary near where I live.) The results? Except for the title on the results page, both Bing and Live produced precisely the same results.

  Other Bing

• Bing? Microsoft pays money for this stuff?

  Posted on May 26, 2009 at 08:48 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  The latest edition of MSN Search, er, Windows Live Search, uh, Live Search, formerly code-named Kumo, has now emerged as Bing.

  Imagine. Instead of telling someone to “Google it,” you can now tell them to “Bing it.” Kinda has a nice, cheap and sleazy feel to it, eh?

  Advertising Age says that Microsoft will spend $80,000,000 for an advertising campaign designed to convince you to Bing it.

  People with knowledge of the planned push said the ads won’t go after Google, or Yahoo for that matter, by name. Instead, they’ll focus on planting the idea that today’s search engines don’t work as well as consumers previously thought by asking them whether search (aka Google) really solves their problems. That, Microsoft is hoping, will give consumers a reason to consider switching search engines, which, of course, is one of Bing’s biggest challenges.

  Maybe I’m old-fashioned (heck, maybe I’m the only sane one left), but I just can’t imagine having Internet Explorer sitting on my desktop, the search bar in the upper right corner, with a subtly grayed-out “Bing” in the search bar inviting me to search the Microsoft way.

  I should start taking bets on how long this name will last.

  UPDATE: MS is renaming Virtual Earth “Bing Maps.” Farecast (which is a worthwhile service!) becomes “Bing Travel.” Gawd, you’d think they would’ve learned something from the horrible “.NET” branding some years ago.

  Microsoft News Bing, Live Search, Windows Live Search, Windows Search
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