It seems that the king of search has its competitors nipping at its heels. While Google is still the top of the totem pole when it comes to search, Yahoo and Bing are gaining some ground. There are some major concerns with the numbers, though. Google has taken a stance of not actually creating content while Yahoo and Bing both consist of original and user-generated material. This almost makes it seem like comparing apples and oranges.
Google has a market share of 62.6 percent, down from 63.7 in May, according to Comscore. Both Yahoo and Microsoft’s sites including its flagship search tool, Bing, saw gains, each increasing their numbers from 18.3 to 18.9 percent and 12.1 to 12.7 percent, respectively, from May to June. Yet all three search engines experienced growth year over year, with Bing leading the pack at 77 percent volume growth last year. Google grew 12.7 percent.
The numbers are not all that drastic, but Yahoo and Bing are gaining a little. It’s not surprising that this would be the case. Google is the gold standard when it comes to search. It’s a household name and has even become a verb. Google is everywhere from your desktop to your mobile phone. As far as search goes, they have probably run out of room to grow.
Bing, however, is something new and exciting for many users. Even those happy with Google can’t help but try it out. Microsoft is working very hard to promote Bing and is in no way lacking the resources to do so. Yahoo is actually now using Bing on the back-end for its own search efforts.
Bing also has plenty of money behind it to keep at Google’s heels. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer stated in 2008 that his company is dedicating five years to building a better site.
The discrepancy in the comparison between Google, Yahoo, and Bing is that Yahoo and Bing are gaming the system. Because they are creating content as well as providing contextual search results, they give themselves an advantage. Google, however, has a policy of not creating any content.
UBS analysts Brian Pitz and Brian Fitzgerald note that a big driver for the market share gains at Yahoo and Bing were the use of contextual searches – searches tied to slide shows and other material in which the search results are offered without specifically being requested. Excluding contextually driven searches, the UBS analysts note, Yahoo gained 10 basis points of market share, and Microsoft 20 basis points.
While they are growing, it’s doubtful that Yahoo and/or Bing will overtake Google any time soon. ComScore will be making moves to exclude contextually driven searches in August.
via Google Loses Search Traffic to Yahoo and Bing: Analysis