When you think ‘search engine’ what brand springs to mind? For almost all of us it’s Google. This is especially so in the UK, where Google powers around 90% of all Internet searches. Some of you may still think ‘Yahoo’. And a few pioneers might think ‘Bing’.

But according to the ComScore monthly search report, its Facebook that is experiencing the fastest growth as a search engine. Search volumes on Facebook grew by a massive 35% in July alone.

Other brands experiencing strong growth in search were Craigslist (8%), eBay and Bing (5%), Flickr and Delicious (4%) and YouTube (1%).

The growth in these brands not normally associated with search queries was very much at the cost of the traditional search engines. Google fell 2%, AskJeeves 4%, and Yahoo and AOL dropped 5% each.

In terms of absolute numbers, the traditional search engines still rule the roost. In July there were 12.9 billion searches on Google; 2.8 billion on Yahoo; and Microsoft sites accumulated 1.3 billion searches.

Google of course is fiercely protecting its users’ ‘eye-time’. They have recognised the huge revenue potential of social networking, by adding lots of sticky and social features to their web properties. The most recent defensive move was their shift to feature ‘real time‘ entries in the search engine results page. But if Facebook search continues to grow at this rate, it might be that Google will have to start to defend its pure search homeland.

And it seems that Facebook has real ambition when it comes to search. Facebook recently bought FriendFeed and also expanded its own services, which has boosted its ability to provide real-time search.

A few weeks ago Facebook unveiled a new search service that allows members to search for status updates, links, photos and videos. Whilst previously users could find entries for other users’ profiles, the new Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) serve them in categories depending on the search query.

Have you tried searching on Facebook? Do you think that Facebook could be a serious rival to Google when it comes to search? Do you think Facebook will be able to monetise their new services? Leave us a comment below.

Lots of the time on this blog we go on about Google. We’ve extolled its virtues as a search engine, and waxed lyrical about its rate of innovation. And when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation, the advice we give you is how to boost your website up the Search Engine Results page for Google, and not Yahoo or Bing.

All this of course is because Google is the most popular search engine. In the US 65% of web users prefer Google. In the UK it’s closer to 90%.

But how do you know that you prefer Google? Oh sure, at some point in the past you tried it, liked it, and found the results the most accurate search could offer. You made the psychological decision to stick with it and be loyal. If you have tried another search engine since, such as Bing, how many of you had already decided to give it a go in the full knowledge that you’d still stick to Google no matter how good the results?

And that’s typical of how, as consumers, we choose one brand over another. The first time you try similar products from different companies, it’s difficult to make up your mind. But once the mind is made up, most of us tend to keep to that decision. Apart from requiring no further effort, it constantly reaffirms to each of us that we made the right choice.

And that’s where blind search testing comes in. The website http://blindsearch.fejus.com allows you to compare the results for Google, Yahoo and Bing. The results are stripped bare of any branding, design, or clues to which search engine is delivering which result. Users can than vote for the result that they think is most relevant to their search query

And the interesting thing is that once all that branding is stripped away, we can make an honest decision about which SERP is most relevant to our search query. Once again we can evaluate the quality of the results without any preconceptions of that search engine’s brand.

Here’s the surprising bit. After around a month of testing, this blind search tool found that users preferred Google 41% of the time, Bing 31% and Yahoo 28%. That’s a huge discrepancy each search engine’s actual market share.

Aside from showing that we’re making the decision to stick with Google for reasons other than its accurate results, it also shows what an uphill battle the other search engines have. Even if they make their product much, much better than Google, in all likelihood people are going to be reluctant to switch.

Have a go on the blind search tool and let us know which result you prefer best.

We reported previously that Microsoft’s newest search engine Bing had had a strong entry into the US market. And early data from Hitwise indicated that in the UK too it was do(b)ing pretty well, despite that lack of advertising support.

But more comprehensive data from Neilsen out this week shows that far from taking the UK market by storm, Bing is making little headway this side of the pond.

Whilst Bing reached 7 million unique visitors in May, that figure had dropped to just 6.4 million in June, down 7.7%. This decline reflects research published earlier this month by JP Morgan indicating that whilst users were prepared to try Bing out, they were far less likely to make a permanent switch away from Google.

In terms of ranking by unique users, this puts Bing 5th in the UK market behind Google, Google Image Search, Yahoo and Ask.com.

“While it’s very early days, Bing has no impact on the UK search results and hasn’t caused a ripple effect. The market remains very stable and hasn’t changed much in the past couple of years” said Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at The Nielsen Company,.

Google continued to dominate, increasing its user base by 2.2% in June, with 31.6 million unique visitors.

In the UK we are yet to see the impact of Microsoft’s’ planned marketing activity for Bing, due here in the new year. Whilst it feels like we’re been talking about Bing for a while, ask your non-techie friends if they’ve ever heard of it – I bet you the answer would be no. And now of course with Microsoft and Yahoo combining their search business in the next few months, maybe Microsoft is less concerned about Bing standing on its own two feet, since it will become the default search engine on Yahoo too.

Have you been tempted away from Google? Does Bing have a feature you particularly like? Leave us a comment below.

Anyone following the news last week will have noticed the proposed hook up between Microsoft’s search business and Yahoo.

The two companies have been dancing around each other for the last 18 months, ever since Yahoo rejected a $45billion take over bid by Microsoft.

Since then of course Yahoo have had a change of leader with Carol Bartz stepping in to fill the shoes of departing founder Jerry Yang.

The last 18 months has also been filled by the ever expanding influence of Google, coupled with little or no innovation from Yahoo.

Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft’s new search engine ‘Bing’ will become the default search engine on Yahoo under a revenue-sharing deal.

For the first couple of years, Yahoo would keep 100% of the revenue generated, plus a further 10% – all according to tech blog AllThingsD. In the third year, Yahoo’s share would drop to 90%

The deal would give MicroHoo / YahSoft a combined market share of 30% of the US search ad market. This compares to Google’s 65%.

The US Department of Justice may well stand in the way of any deal, possibly seeing it as a collapse of competition. Last year a search ad deal between Yahoo and Google was blocked by the regulators. .

All this is probably a bigger deal in the US than it is in the UK, were Google’s market share is nearer 90%.

What does this mean if you’re trying to drive visitors to your website? Well it’s quite interesting. If you’re using sponsored search advertising (PPC), then it means that Microsoft’s AdCenter will be used more and more. That brought a collective groan in our office since it’s hardly the easiest thing to use.

When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), things may get more complicated. At the moment all SEO optimisation efforts are made to boost a website up the results pages on Google, since that is where the vast majority of traffic comes from. If a second powerful player emerges, website owners will have to optimise for both. And since they have different ways of categorising and indexing web pages, that could be complicated. You don’t want to have to have two websites – one that you boost up Google, and the other that you boost up Bing!

What do you think of the deal? Will it have an influence on your website building? Leave us a comment below.

The big three search engines all reported their quarterly earnings last week. No guesses for who came out top of the heap.

Microsoft online ad revenues, the part of the business in which their search engines sit, were down 14% for the quarter. Even further behind, Yahoo figures were down a whopping 16%.

And Google once again confounded the critics and the recession by revealing revenues up another 3%.

This is as much about what Google does right, as what the other two do wrong. When it comes to Microsoft, as we mentioned previously, Bing has gone down very well with both consumers and experts, although some have questioned whether bing will end up being a has-bing…

Microsoft is making other moves to boost its online advertising revenue, with a recent announcement of an online version of their desktop based Office Suite. Although that might be as much about pressure from the likes of Linux based Open Office and of course Google Docs.

Google has recently made further inroads into areas previously dominated by the other two. This month they announced the launch of ad exchange where banner inventory can be openly traded. Yahoo are already in this space, and Microsoft say they too will enter next year. The company that gets it right is ensured another huge revenue stream.

Who is going to win the race? Well from a users perspective I think few can doubt the ease and depth of searching on Google compared to the other two. And the rate of innovation at Google means that anyone else is going to have a hard time catching up. Of course as any advertiser will tell you, Google’s tools far outstrip the others for ease of use and for results too.

Google’s dominance looks pretty set. But I wonder for how long will we put up with a single big company occupying our online experience? Leave us a comment below.

Bing, Microsoft’s newest search engine, has been making serious headway in clawing market share from its rivals. It has been well received on both sides of the pond, helped not least by an estimated $100m marketing fund from Microsoft.

And lots of people have been giving it lots of compliments. Aside from the stylish home page, it displays results in a clear and uncluttered way, and has some great features such as the preview screen that lets you see what a web page is all about before visiting it.

The press has loved it too. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times asked their finest tech gurus to scrutinize Bing: both gave it glowing reviews.

But according to a recent survey by JP Morgan, despite these gains Bing is doomed to failure.

The main problem, according to the survey, is that people are happy with Google and don’t really see a reason to switch. Although a quarter of those who were willing to give Bing a try, almost all people would not be making the switch permanently. As far as these people see it, there is nothing wrong with their current search experience.

The survey isn’t all bad news. Apparently the big advertising campaign had done what it needed to in terms of raising awareness and getting people to try the product. More than half the survey respondents had heard of Bing and a quarter had tried it.

However, of those who had tried it less than 40% had used it more than 5 times in the last month. This pattern is more typical of people just testing it rather than making the permanent switch. Looking to the future, just 11% of those said they would use the search engine more than 15 times in the next month.

As we discussed previously, more and more people are using Bing. But despite the steady growth in market share, Bing is not converting users from Google, but rather switching people from other search engines such as AOL or Ask.com. This idea ties in with our previous post that said that Bing’s growth was very much at the expense of other Microsoft search engines such as MSN and Live.com

So what can Microsoft do about it? According to JP Morgan, the product needs to be made ‘better’ and have a better distribution.

Thanks for those wise words JP Morgan.

Make the product better? Easy to say. Not so easy to do.

Tried Bing? Like Bing? Leave a comment below.

Two of the three big search engines have made announcements this week about new developments in ‘real time’ search.

Real time search has been seen as the next big thing for search engines. Much as it sounds, ‘real time’ search means getting up to the minute results pages – even for articles and posts that have only just been made – rather than a traditional ‘index’ of the web which has been compiled over the last 3 months.

It has been ushered in due to Twitter’s search function which allows you to see what people are Tweeting about right now.

To prevent themselves been left behind in a potentially lucrative market, both Google and Microsoft have developed ‘real time’ additions to their products,

In our ‘Google the innovator‘ series we showed how Google allows you to see if any new instances of a search query have been added in the last 24 hours. Google has also updated its Blog Search, which includes the opportunity to see the latest posts from popular blogs.

And Microsoft’s new search engine ‘Bing’ has just announced a trial that means that the latest Tweets from a few high profile users will be instantly displayed in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

But how useful is real time search to us consumers? Do we really care if someone has just Tweeted about the subject that we’re searching for – will that really make any difference to us?

It probably depends on the sorts of things that you’re searching for. If you want to know the latest developments in Michael Jackson saga, then (as we showed last week) its pretty important to have instantly available results. But if you’re researching a place to go on holiday, then it’s not going to be quite as necessary.

One problem with real time search is its inaccuracy. Web pages with true and accurate information are often linked to by other web pages. These links – amoung other things – ensure that those pages rank well in the results pages. As a consequence, more people see these accurate pages. It’s a positive feedback loop.

Whereas a 140 character Tweet is at the other end of the scale. Apart from being unverified, it might be a joke, a rumour re-tweeted. If other people then search for and find that Tweet in the SERPs, and then subsequently find it to be untrue, then those people will loose faith in that search engine’s ability to return accurate results.

So maybe Google has got the balance right with this one. Bing has no way of knowing how accurate the Tweets in their SERPs are. Whereas blogs – which by their very nature are a bit more accurate and more thought out that Tweets – might be a good way to capture that ‘real time’ essence without compromising accuracy.

What do you think? Would real time SERPs help you promote your website? Do you as a user want to see Tweets in the SERPs? Leave us a comment below.

Research from Hitwise UK out this week shows how well Microsoft’s the new search engine ‘Bing’ is getting on in the UK. We revealed just a few days ago how the US market has taken to the Bing. But whilst Americans are bombarded with a $100m advertiBing campaign (do you see what I did there) to promote the new engine, over here we’ve had to be content with a few niche press releases.

The UK stats show that following the official June 3rd launch Bing’s market share grew significantly. If you exclude Google US and UK, Bing was the third ranked search engine, making up almost 11% of the UK market. After the launch hype, traffic has declined although the average length of visit has grown to over 8 minutes.

And what are people looking for on Bing? Well the top search term for the week ending 6th June was ‘facebook’, which made up 3.94% of all searches.

Branded terms (those that include a company or product name) make up the other big numbers (as usual), but despite that there are 5 generic terms in Bing’s top 100.

More of a concern for Bing is that a significant proportion of its ‘downstream’ traffic – those websites that people visit after having been on Bing -were other search engines. This suggests that people tried Bing our before returning to their favourite search engine.

And another concern for Bing is who they are stealing market share from. Most people visiting Bing came from MSN UK- another of Microsoft’s search engines. There’s obviously not a lot of point in building a brand new search engine if the only people who end up using it were previously customers of your other search engine. Microsoft would clearly rather convert users from Google and Yahoo.

Here’s a graph showing UK visits to Bing, from Hitwise.

Have you tried Bing yet? If so, what do you think? And does your WebEden website rank well in Bing’s Search Engine Results Page? Leave us a comment below.

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.

Last week Microsoft announced the beta launch of a brand new search engine called ‘Bing’, To those in the know this comes as no surprise, since there has been lots of chat amongst the Twitterati of a Microsoft search project with a code name of ‘Kumo’.

Whilst the search engines is now fully available for anyone to use, Microsoft are saying that Bing is very much in Beta, and that there is still a lot more to come.

Bing has a few new features, some of which are complete innovations and others which appear to be recycled ideas tried by others in the field.

There’s something called ‘Best Match’ which shows you the best result for popular search queries that other people are performing, And another one called Instant Answers, which gives you the answer to a question actually in the content of the results page, rather than referring you to other websites that might contain the answer,

This second one at least appears to be very similar to the kind of thing recent upstart Wolphram Alpha has been trying to perfect.

Microsoft for its part is anxious to stress that Bing is still only in early stage development, and that there is still much more to come. Bing will be building data based on what consumers search and click on, and then using that data to refine the results it shows. A Microsoft spokesman said that they wanted “to help people find the shortest distance from their initial search query to the point of making an informed decision.”

Have you tried Bing yet? Give it a go, find out if its any good, and leave your comments below.