Bing Climbs Further up the Rankings
Google has long dominated the search market – and will probably continue to do so for a long time to come. But part of their dominance, as well as providing excellent service, has partly been because of the lack of serious competition. Is Microsoft’s Bing the challenger that everybody’s been waiting for?
Bing has seen steady progress since its launch and is starting to make a serious name for itself in the world of search. That perception is backed up by statistics provided by StatCounter, which says that it has leapfrogged Yahoo in the search stakes to second place.
It may not seem too significant in the grand scheme of things, as despite the change in position Bing still only has 4.37 per cent of the global search market. Yahoo’s share has fallen to 3.93 per cent – Google, meanwhile, control an astonishing 89.94 per cent of the search market, showing that it’ll be a long time before anyone can take them on properly.
Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter chief executive, said: "It is significant that Bing overtook Yahoo! globally for the first time on a monthly basis but it remains a tough battle to claw back Google's market share. Although Google dipped below the 90 per cent mark in February worldwide for the first time since August 2009, it shows little sign of losing its global dominance any time soon."
But, however slight Bing’s growth may have been, it still shows that there are viable search alternatives out there and people are starting to explore them properly. Though Google will argue their drop to 89 per cent is small, it’ll be interesting to revisit these statistics in the future and to gauge whether the trend has continued or not.
It’s important when search marketing not to optimise for only one engine, and to always put the user first at all times. Whether it’s through your web design, PPC management or more, constructing a great user experience will see your traffic and ROI improve over time.
