Bing has had a good month. Well, a relatively good month. Though Google continues to innovate through the roof, showcasing some of its most exciting inventions this month, Bing has had a few boosts of its own. The search giants have been in an ongoing battle ever since Bing was first released by Microsoft in June, 2009.
Bing Has Strong Click Through Rate
A new study shows that Bing users tend to click on ads 75 percent more often than Google users. This is a huge difference. The report, recently released by Chitka Research, says that the strong click through rate is continuing to climb for Bing. Bing users, the report shows, click on ads 1.74 percent of the time, whereas Google users only do so .98 percent of the time. That being said, it is important to remember that Google’s percentage of the search traffic is astronomically higher than Bing’s (84 percent for Google, versus just under six percent for Bing). However, according to Chitka Research’s analysis: “all things being considered the same, driving one Bing user (or AOL or Ask user) to your site can be more valuable than driving one Google user.”
Mozilla Executive Promotes Bing Over Google
In a blog post on December 10th, Mozilla’s director of community development, Asa Dotzler, said that Bing has a better privacy policy than Google, and urged Firefox users to make the switch from Google to Bing. This is an influential move, with Firefox holding such a huge portion of the internet market for web browsers.
Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Finalized
On December 4th, the Microsoft-Yahoo deal was finally finalized, and locked in for 2010. The deal, you may have heard, will have Bing powering search on Yahoo’s sites, and will likely narrow the gap between Google’s market share, and Bing’s. It’s expected that the combined search engine of Bing and Yahoo will hold about one third of the US market.
Microsoft in Talks with News Corp about Partnership
The plan being discussed would involve News Corp being paid to de-index its news sites from Google. The move could set a precedent for search engines paying for news content. It was meant to not only put a dent in Google’s plans, but also shine a ray of light on the online newspaper industry, which has been struggling for some time.
But…Google Still Doing Quite Well
This all being said, Google did very well for itself in November, taking even more of the search share, according to Experian Hitwise. Google took 71.57 percent of the search market in November, 2009, representing a one percent month-over-month increase. Meanwhile, Bing actually slipped from 9.57 percent, down to 9.34 percent.
Overall, Google is still the clear winner, but it’s clear that Bing is preparing for some big things in 2010, and it will be interesting to see what the new year brings to the search world.
Kaila Krayewski is a freelance journalist with a passion for all things internet. Having worked for nearly two years as the public relations manager for an internation search engine optimization company, and publishing hundreds of articles (how-to, informational, and otherwise) on SEO, she knows a thing or two about the field. Furthermore, having just started up her own website blondetraveler.com, she is doing her best to keep one step ahead of the search engines in order to keep the traffic flowing.
Read other articles by Kaila Krayewski
