Regardless of what you think of Microsoft and its products (granted, not everyone is a fan of the goliath), their new serch engine, Bing, is winning over the hearts and mice of a certain segment of internet users. If this trend continues, this could lead to downward pressure on ad prices, as well as a better return on investment for search engine marketing efforts across all three of the top search engines.
Just this past month Bing gained more of a percentage of market share than any of the other major search engines – up more than 22% from July, according to Nielsen. With Google’s perennial firm grasp on the #1 spot, this leaves Yahoo! and Bing to duke it out for numero dos…and Bing is gaining ground fast.
| Search Engine | Searches | Month-Over-Month Growth | Share of Searches |
| 6,986,580,000 | 2.6% | 64.6% | |
| Yahoo! | 1,726,060,000 | -4.2% | 16.0% |
| Bing | 1,156,415,000 | 22.1% | 10.7% |
Until now, if you were thinking about expanding your search engine marketing campaign beyond Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM) was the natural consideration; Bing (Microsoft Ad Center) not as much. But Bing just became a whole lot more appealing.
There’s a minimum amount of overhead required to start up and manage a search marketing campaign…and for some industries Microsoft’s search engines (MSN and Live Search) have traditionally not offered enough eyeballs to justify the time required to manage an ad campain on their platform. But as it gets closer to matching the number of searches on Yahoo!, Bing becomes more appealing to advertisers, and ad prices across all three of the top search engines could become a bit more competitive.
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Microsoft didn’t take long to tout these gains that Bing has made compared to other major search engines. Today they reached out to their adCenter clients and pointed out some benefits for advertisers on Bing. This is the exact email:
Dear Jeremy,
In this economy, good news is hard to come by. Despite this, we’ve seen positive results with Bing.™ In fact, Bing was the only major search engine to post growth in internet core searches from June to July. In addition, Bing Shopping market share has increased 169 percent since June.
Many of our search marketing clients, including those using Bing cashback, are reaping the benefits from these increases:
“Since Hewlett-Packard began using Bing cashback, we have seen an increase in qualified traffic resulting in higher click through rates and over 175% increase in conversion compared to our non-cashback conversion on Live Search.”
– Page Hetzel, Interactive Marketing Manager, Hewlett-Packard
We’re working diligently to improve the search experience with new and innovative features that will help your audience make more informed decisions online. Just over the last several weeks, we’ve added several new features to help consumers get:
- Easy answers with real-time Twitter results through 1-click access to celebrity, influential, blogger, or top twitterer pages.
- A richer, more organized experience with Visual Search by allowing users to filter search results based on options of interest.
Make sure your adCenter campaigns are taking advantage of the momentum and performance opportunities that Bing offers. Review your adCenter campaigns today.
Sincerely,
The Microsoft® Advertising Team