Comments for Did Bing's Growth Spurt Come to a Halt in September?

Did Bing's Growth Spurt Come to a Halt in September?

2009-10-01T15:30:32Z

After months of slow but steady increases in its market share, Bing's share of the search market in the US and globally fell for the first time in September. According to StatCounter's Global Stats, Bing's share of the search market in the US fell from 9.64% in August to 8.51% last month. Globally, Bing didn't fare much better, as it went from 3.58% to 3.25%. Yahoo's share went from 10.5% in August to only 9.4% in September. The combined share of Bing and Yahoo has now fallen to 17.91%.

]]> According to StatCounter's CEO Aodhan Cullen, this downward trend for Bing began in the middle of August. The launch of Bing's visual search feature should have given Bing a nice boost in publicity last month, but if we can trust StatCounter's data, this wasn't enough to counter the downward trend that already began in August.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Search Engine Market Share

In the long run, these numbers could obviously turn out to be nothing more than a blip on the radar for Bing. After all, even the numbers for Google fluctuate every month. We also haven't seen numbers for September from other analytics firms like Hitwise or Compete yet, though while they often differ, they usually agree with StatCounter when it comes to general trends.

The question, of course, is why Bing stopped growing last month. Did Microsoft scale back its marketing campaign? Or did users, after the novelty wore off, simply go back to Google?

Comment from Justin Davis on 2009-10-16

2009-10-16T20:54:29Z

I like your thoughts. Can you send me a link to your other posts?

Justin Davis
Disclaimer: Author does not represent the legal position of
Lightspeed Systems Inc. which solely provides an internet filter to K-12 schools.

Comment from David on 2009-10-02

2009-10-02T16:06:10Z

I want to use something other than Google like Bing or Yahoo but I always find myself back with Google. I switched search engines on my iPhone the other day to Yahoo and tried it for a bit and it just felt slightly slower and it just didn't feel right. I have tried Bing and in general I am very happy with it.

The one problem is that Safari 4 is my browser of choice so I am stuck with Google as I always use the search box to the right of the address bar. Maybe it would help Microsoft if they offered the browsers (Firefox etc.) a bit of cash like Google does so all the web browsers have Bing by default. It would require Microsoft to spend a bit, but if they are serious then it is a worthwhile investment which will pay dividends in the future. The only way it will hurt Microsoft is by helping to fund Firefox and Safari which will eat into IE market share, but at the end of the day it will be ads from search that makes them money not Internet Explorer.

Comment from Alyssa Myers on 2009-10-01

2009-10-02T04:26:33Z

I still can't get Bing to index my site and I've used the Bing ping tool. It could be a contender against Google, but what are they doing? Sleeping on the job?

Comment from Troy Peterson on 2009-10-01

2009-10-01T20:59:12Z

If you look at the graph... they never really added (much) traffic, they just consolidated traffic between Live.com and MSN!!!!

If you look at the numbers, on their highest month Microsoft (as a whole) only gained 1.61% market share compared with the cumulative total between MSN and Live.

Huh... I knew there was something wrong with those numbers.

Comment from hj on 2009-10-01

2009-10-01T18:02:48Z

Microsoft is harvesting the fruits of long years of hard labor: thwarting competition, breaking standards, building traps for theirs customers, you name it.

There's a huge harvest ahead and they have just started.

Comment from wopular on 2009-10-01

2009-10-01T18:00:26Z

Those Bing commercials are actually getting really annoying. They're also very misleading too. Most search engines nowadays aren't as spammy as 10 years ago, which their commercials seem to refer to. So I'm not sure what search engines they're referring to. It's certainly not Google. They gotta spend another $100M for brand new commercials.

Comment from Brendan on 2009-10-01

2009-10-01T17:31:15Z

Once people realized it was a re-branded live.com they stopped using it.

Comment from hacker on 2009-10-01

2009-10-01T16:51:53Z

good

Comment from Todd on 2009-10-01

2009-10-01T16:38:14Z

"The question, of course, is why Bing stopped growing last month. Did Microsoft scale back its marketing campaign? Or did users, after the novelty wore off, simply go back to Google?"

Part of a larger issue: The divisive "culture war" within the U.S., where *everything* is marginalized into "conservative" and "liberal", now includes search engines.

The #tcot crowd has been pining for an alternative to those "sissy liberal hippies" that run Google for a long time, and their *prayers* were answered with Bing ( built by ultra right wing Microsoft ).

...problem is for all Bing's pro-gun, anti-Obama content filtering, its an inferior technology, causing a quick abandonment of it as a business tool. I imagine Bing's poor content filters sent some pr0n to Sara Palin ditto-heads too.

You can see this same division in the Facebook vs. Twitter, Mac vs. PC, hybrid vs. SUV, on and on.

The Linux using, fiercely independent person that I am, who refuses to be forced into participating in this culture war says: "United we stand, divided we fall"