Is Bing Gobbling Up Google Share or Yahoo’s?

Microsoft’s rebranded search engine Bing is growing at a steady pace, according to the researches. Internet research firm comSource shows that the Bing has gained 12.1 percent of search results over the week from 8-12 June. During the period, Bing scooped a 16.7 per cent daily search penetration level. That shows the pay offs to Microsoft’s massive ad campaign. Still there’s an underlying question that everyone’s interested - whether Bing is eating out Google’s share in search market.

Well, from what we could make out Bing’s growth affected Google in no way; let’s see how

The Search Market Story

According to ComSource Bing continued to increase in its position, throughout the week of June 8. It continues to generate interest from the market for second consecutive week. However, ComSource’s data contains no information about Bing’s impact on other search engine.

Comparisons

With  no ready made comparisons available, the most feasible way is to compare the traffic of Bing with other search engines including  Google, for the past two weeks. Web metrics company, Compete  provides a profound analysis of the search market trends. The Compete men suggest that although Bing has helped Microsoft to grow as a search product, but the big picture is misleading. Compete’s managing director of online media says that it is actually a lift in the number of users going to Microsoft search. He pointed out the crux that they haven’t seen much of a consistent trend of the market share shifting toward Microsoft.

Google Growth

This is the most exciting part of Compete’s research that reveals the number of users visiting Google has also climbed up from the week before Bing’s launch to this past weekend. Google’s share of U.S. search engine users has went up from 72 percent on May 24 to 73 percent on June 14. Interestingly, the Compete data shows Yahoo’s as well as Ask.com’s share of search market dropping by 1 percent during the same period.

Of course, it a fact that the method of measurement varies in metrics company, which might show fluctuations from one data set to the next. However, the data from another source StatCounter, repeats the same story. They show that Google has gained 0.43 percent from May 24 to June 14. This backs up the fact that Bing could even turn a stone on Google’s wall.

The hypothesis might be summed up as, people are not quitting their primary search engine, it’s more likely that they are using Bing secondarily.

Well, that comes as a relief for Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin, who was having sleepless night after Bing’s birth.