Bing Users Are From Internet Explorer; Google Users From Firefox, Chrome & Safari

While almost 75% of Bing visitors in North America use Internet Explorer, only about 40% of Google’s search visitors use the web’s most popular browser. Instead, Google deals with Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Google’s own Chrome browser cause those to combine and outdistance IE usage. Internet Explorer Is Big On Bing The figures come from a […]

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While almost 75% of Bing visitors in North America use Internet Explorer, only about 40% of Google’s search visitors use the web’s most popular browser. Instead, Google deals with Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Google’s own Chrome browser cause those to combine and outdistance IE usage.

Internet Explorer Is Big On Bing

The figures come from a new report by Chitika, which analyzed a week’s worth of traffic across its ad network sites from July 20 to 26, 2011, for North America. Chitika says almost 75% of all Bing search traffic comes from IE users:

bing-browser-chitika

Our internal stats here at Search Engine Land confirm what Chitika’s data shows about the strength of Bing usage among IE users.

We went all the way back to the start of the year to see browser usage among both Bing. Our numbers show an even higher percentage of Bing traffic coming from IE users — almost 77%:

sel-stats-bing

For IE, Computer Maker Set Default Choice

While you might think that Bing does well because it’s automatically the default choice in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, that’s not the case. Computer manufacturers themselves generally set the default on new computers.

Google had been very aggressive on this front buying default positioning until around 2008. After that, Microsoft led such deals. The article below explains more:

If you upgrade your computer, I believe that Internet Explorer 9 will use whatever settings you currently have. That’s how Internet Explorer 8 has worked:

Benchmarking Internet Explorer

How’s the 75% Internet Explorer usage that Chitika found compare to usage overall? Here’s the breakdown for all traffic use:

Browser Breakdown11

As you can see, Internet Explorer has a 52% overall usage. That means the 75% usage by Bing visitors is well above normal. Those deals Microsoft has been cutting are paying off.

Google: Home To The “Alternative” Browsers

That leads to Google? What’s the situation there?

GoogleBrowsers

Overall, Internet Explorer is only used by about 40% of visitors to Google Search. After that, Firefox just barely leads Chrome as the most popular browser, 20.3% to 20.1%. Safari is just behind at 19%.

On Search Engine Land, we see a different view. Firefox is actually the leading browser used by people who find us through Google Searcho at 34%, followed by Internet Explorer at 30%, Chrome at 26% and Safari at 10%:

sel-stats-google

Google has deals with both Firefox and Apple to be the default choice in those browsers. Those deals and arrangements are clearly working well to give Google independence from any lockout the company has long-feared might happen (but never has) in Internet Explorer.

Here’s some more background on all of this:

In Chrome, Google is the default choice, but only on a new computer that hasn’t already got a browser with a default search engine. If you install Chrome on an existing computer, it will honor whatever your current default is, though it asks for this to be reconfirmed. This is a past article about this, and I believe the situation hasn’t changed:

    Matt McGee contributed to this report.


    Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


    About the author

    Danny Sullivan
    Contributor
    Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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