June 9th, 2009
We're not in Omaha any more: Microsoft's Bing share on the rise
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was right in questioning recent numbers showing Microsoft’s Bing search had Yahoo Search on the run. (Her claim that the data applied to a small segment of the population “maybe in Omaha someplace” was not.)
On June 9, the click counters at comScore issued more reliable data that showed Bing, indeed, is making some headway. According to comScore, the initial results of a week’s worth of share analysis “show a substantial improvement in Microsoft’s position in the search market in the days following Bing’s introduction.”
It’s not just a one-day lift in share, comScore officials said. Microsoft sites increased their collective average daily penetration among U.S. searchers from 13.8 percent during the period of May 26-30 to 15.5 percent during the period of June 2-6, 2009. Microsoft’s share of search result pages in the U.S. grew 9.1 percent, to 11.1 percent, during the same timeframe, comScore said.
My ZDNet blogging colleague Larry Dignan shared his week-long “search diary,” during which he tried making Bing his near-exclusive engne, with mixed results. I, too, have been trying to use Bing for more of my searches. Like Dignan, I’ve found Bing to be good when I’m looking for specfic consumables, like airfares, digital cameras, lists of symptoms for a medical condition. I’ve found it doesn’t return good results when I am researching a blog post (specifically, when I am looking to link a post I know has been written on a specific topic).
Anyone else out there tried Binging it? What is working/not working for you?
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