Hitwise’s latest report reveals that the Bing search engine has improved more than just its market share since its 2009 launch.
Hitwise reports that Bing’s success rate has grown rapidly since October 2009, when it was ranked well below both Google and Yahoo. Over the past few months the search engine has both grown in popularity and effectiveness; in October, Hitwise gave Bing a success rating of 70%. By December, this had grown to 75%.
The success rate metric is of particular interest from a search engine marketing perspective. Hitwise explains that this is “the percentage of executed searches that result in a visit to a site other than a main search domain”. To some extent this reflects how worthwhile SEO and PPC advertising on the search engine is in reaching users.
Microsoft’s rival to Google has been closely watched by the search engine marketing industry since it was launched last June. It’s rapid growth over the past six months has raised it from a market share of just 4% to the third most popular search engine in the US. Whilst it has had less success in other markets, when coupled with Yahoo’s falling popularity among users the newcomer is predicted to make further inroads in the near future despite a small loss of audience during December.
The report also noted that out of the top 100 search terms from Google, Yahoo! search and Bing, that “nearly all terms are brand and/or navigational in nature for each engine”. These terms account for 9.5% of click-throughs on Google, 15.1% on Yahoo! search, and 16.5% on Bing.
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