Has Bing’s Growth Stalled?

Since it’s launch Bing has steadily been inching up in market share, conveying the impression that Google has a bona fide competitor on its hands. Yesterday, however, data from NetApplications and StatCounter reflect that Bing may have seen its first usage declines since the engine’s launch several months ago. Before getting too excited one way […]

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Since it’s launch Bing has steadily been inching up in market share, conveying the impression that Google has a bona fide competitor on its hands. Yesterday, however, data from NetApplications and StatCounter reflect that Bing may have seen its first usage declines since the engine’s launch several months ago.

Before getting too excited one way or another, we must be cautious. There are monthly upticks and downturns. Before drawing any broader conclusions we’d need to see this confirmed by comScore, Hitwise, Nielsen, Compete — in other words, a consensus view — and then we’d need to look at the trend over a period of time.

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Source: StatCounter

There are more feature enhancements and releases in the pipeline for Bing. And I know that Microsoft believes it’s only just begun with the search engine. There’s also the Yahoo deal, which still must be approved but which more than double’s Bing’s advertiser’s reach. And there’s also mobile, which is heating up.

But if it turned out that Bing’s growth had in fact stalled it would be a kind of “what now?” moment for Microsoft.


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About the author

Greg Sterling
Contributor
Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

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