Bing to Dethrone Google?
By Kurt Steinbrueck
April 12, 2011 
1 Comment
Bing is slowly, but surely chipping away at Google’s domination of the search market. In fact, if the current trends continue, Bing will overtake Google in less than 1 year!
According to Experian’s Hitwise.com, Bing saw a 5% increase in their search market share last month, breaching 30% of the market for the first time, while Google saw a 3% decrease. Those figures may not seem very impressive at first, that is until you see that Bing has been gaining 5% now for the past 6 months during which time Google has seen an average decline of about 3% each month.
At this rate Bing will overtake Google as the leader in the search market by January 2012!
Graph from TFTS
Why Is Bing Gaining on Google?
So, why is Bing doing so well and Google suffering? It could be for several reasons, but here are a few possiblities:
- Google has been hit with a lot of negative publicity over privacy concerns for several months.
- Google’s political connections have led to a negative impressions and even boycotts from conservatives.
- Bing has their ongoing “the decision engine” ad campaign.
Those are possibly playing a role in the gains Bing has seen in the last 6 months, but there’s one other factor which I believe plays the largest role.
Bing has a much higher success rate than Google.
Data from Experian Hitwise.com
You Can’t Argue With Success:
According to the Hitwise data, 81% of Bing searches (including Bing powered Yahoo) end up with the searcher clicking through to a website while only 65% of Google searches were successful. That’s a huge disparity. This means that a searcher is nearly 25% more likely to find a relevant result when using Bing than when using Google. When people search they want relevant results and if Bing does a better job, then they are going to keep gaining on Google and eventually defeat Google.
Will Google Go Down?
Bing still has a long way to go. Google still controls more than twice the market share than Bing, but 6 months of gains by Bing is more than a fluke. A lot can happen in a year, especially with two of the largest Internet companies. But it’s good to see Google get some competition.
Graphic by michperu
Do you think Bing will beat out Google?
Do you want Google to be dethroned?
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