Americans say ‘Bing it on’!
Two weeks after its official launch, a report by online measurement firm comScore indicates that Microsoft’s newest search engine ‘Bing’ is proving increasingly popular with Americans.
The search engine delivered 12.1% of all search results in the week commencing 8th June, against 9.1% immediately after launch.
As to whether this is due to Bing’s new features, or the $100m marketing campaign Microsoft is putting behind it Stateside, is unclear. If I had $100m to spend on marketing, I reckon I could improve market share too!
ComScore Senior VP Mike Hurt said that results looked very positive for Bing. “It appears that Microsoft Bing has continued to generate interest from the market for the second consecutive week. These early data reflect a continued positive market reaction to Bing in the initial stages of its launch.”
It will be the end of 2009 before Microsoft starts to measure the UK success, as that is when Microsoft will extend its marketing efforts this side of the pond.
Microsoft, with their search engines live.com and msn.co.uk hold just 4% of the UK search market, lagging behind both Yahoo on 6% and of course Google, at around 88%
In the UK Bing has been called ‘Bing Lite’ since many of the features available in the US version are yet to be launched here.
Is Bing going to be good if you’re a website builder here in the UK? How will Bing affect your Search Engine Optimisation efforts?
So far not enough research has been done that shows how Bing works, and how it differs from Google, so its probably worth continuing with the best practices in our Search Engine Optimisation Guide. If any specific differences come to light we’ll be sure to talk about them here on the WebEden blog.
Have you tried Bing yet? Are you ready to switch away from Google? Leave us a comment below.