The latest figures from the US market (Oct 09) show continued growth for Bing, MSNs rebranded search engine, now owning just under 10% of the total US search market.
Click The Chart Above To View The Enlarged Version
Certainly, MSN have shown tremendous growth, but at the same time, Google have continued to eat into the market share of the minor players inc. Yahoo!, Ask and AOL.
Does the growth of MSN’s Bing mean that the tide is turning within Search Engine usage in the US market?
Simple answer? No.
Bing still relies heavily upon it’s integration into MSN property such as Hotmail, MSN Messenger and MSNs Portals. It’s often used as a “passive” search enquiry as compared with Google where searchers head specifically to “actively” seek information.
The quality of Bing’s search results is increasing and clearly the amount of money MSN are placing into the Bing marketing budgets within the US is having an impact…. but from an SEO perspective, it’s minor to negligible.
Google still retains a vast chunk of the US and UK Search Market and it is here that the UK Business should concentrate most, if not all, of their efforts.
Principally, whilst your business may see greater SERPs ranking from your Search Analytics from Bing this doesn’t simply translate to reshaping your SEO focus. It’s easy to get carried away having seen the latest SEO ranking logs showing your site listing within the top 10 for some of your chosen key phrases. At present, Bing’s pulling power doesn’t provide these rankings with any weighting compared with Top 10 listings within Google. Until that time occurs, and indeed IF it does, your SEO focus should be on Google and getting your business found on Google.
The Winds of Change…. Bing+Yahoo! = Different Story!
Have a look at the chart above once more… wouldn’t it make interesting reading if you combined the search results of Yahoo! and MSN’s Bing?
Well, if US regulatory authorities allow it to pass, early 2010 could see MSN’s Bing search results included within Yahoo! results pages. Suddenly, the race is open again and we have a potential situation whereby the 2nd player in the search marketing business owns 30% rather than the 20% and 10% separately.
MSN are spending big in the States and haven’t made the same marketing impact within the UK having dropped recent ad campaigns altogether… but don’t be surprised to see the market share found in the USA to be reflected in UK figures in the not too distant future.
My advice would be to keep an eye on your Bing SERPs positioning. Generally you will find quality positioning with Google is reflected with quality positioning within the other search engines. Google is always going to be the toughest nut to crack. Get ready to take advantage of the additional impact created by the MSN/Yahoo! partnership, but my bets would still be on Google leading the race to the finish line next year and for many a year looking forward.
Still google leads the race. Google dominates against yahoo and msn and every SEO experts focus to target in google, thanks – Robert