#Bing IS Gaining Ground on #Google in Search

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#Bing IS Gaining Ground on #Google in Search - @bing

I keep seeing these post that boast that Bing is gaining ground in the total search engine market, but are not really affecting Google’s share. This simply is not true… at least according to the statistics provided by ComScore.

Let’s look at the ComScore stats. Here is the July versus August stats:

comScore Expanded Search Query Report August 2009 vs. July 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Expanded Search Entity	Search Queries (MM)
Expanded Search Entity	Jul-09	Aug-09	Percent Change Aug-09 vs. Jul-09
Total Internet	21,558	21,801	1%
Google Sites	12,851	13,006	1%
Google	9,217	9,437	2%
Microsoft Sites	1,262	1,343	6%
Bing	1,076	1,151	7%

Full statistics here: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/9/comScore_Releases_August_2009_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings

Here is the September versus October stats:

comScore Expanded Search Query Report October 2009 vs. September 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Expanded Search Entity	Search Queries (MM)
Expanded Search Entity	Sep-09	Oct-09	Percent Change Oct-09 vs. Sep-09
Total Internet	21,334	22,032	3%
Google Sites	12,839	13,505	5%
Google	9,373	9,788	4%
Microsoft Sites	1,352	1,457	8%
Bing	1,156	1,245	8%

Full statistics here: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/11/comScore_Releases_October_2009_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings

I am not really interested in all of the Google sites, nor all of the Microsoft sites, but rather just the search engines themselves. If you take the search queries (in millions) between just the two sites, it is quite obvious that Bing is indeed taking away shares of the search market from Google. Here is the basic math:

July 2009

Google’s 9217 + Bing’s 1076 = 10293 total

Google % = 89.5%

Bing % = 10.5%

August 2009

Google’s 9437 + Bing’s 1151 = 10588 total

Google % = 89.1%

Bing % = 10.9%

September 2009

Google’s 9373 + + Bing’s 1156 = 10529 total

Google % = 89.0%

Bing % = 11%

October 2009

Google’s 9788 ++ Bing’s 1245 = 11033 total

Google % = 88.7%

Bing % = 11.3%

See what I am talking about? Each month, Bing is taking a small piece away from Google. The November statistics from ComScore will certainly be interesting!

I also found the recent Google versus Bing poll on Mashable very interesting.

"Google with a full 78% of the vote. That’s 2180 votes to Bing’s 519, relegating it to a distant 2nd place at 19%. A slim 3% tie vote at 97 fence-sitters rounded out this week’s head to head brawl."

Source: http://mashable.com/2009/12/04/poll-google-destroys-bing/

I consider Mashable readers probably the most elite search engine users on the Internet. While the poll definitely shows Google is ahead of Bing in the race, I think this also shows that Bing is continuing to gain ground on Google. I would like to see the poll again on Mashable next month and see if the trend is still showing Bing gaining on Google.

While these statistics do look promising, I will admit that there is a lot left to be desired on Bing with their attempts to keep up with Google when crawling the Internet. MSNbot is undoubtedly slow when compared to GoogleBot and I am still waiting for an answer from the Bing team if there will be a BingBot in the future.

Google has always had pride about the simplicity of their search engine user interface but frankly Bing looks way better. I really enjoy the new images that cover the landing page and find myself returning each day just to see the new one. I also believe that the search results are better than Google for what they have indexed. But, because they cannot crawl the Internet as fast as Google, I still find myself doing Google searches to get the latest search results. In fact, I do like the new Search Options on Google that lets me perform queries by date. This saves a lot of time for finding the most current search results.

Anyway, this battle is going to take some time and there is some hope for us Microsoft gurus that are anxious to see the search giant take a tumble. Stay tuned for more!