Google and Bing Fight for Content

It’s becoming clearer by the day that Google sees Bing’s presence as a threat to their service.

Because of Microsoft’s investment in improving Bing’s search algorithm and speed, the technology gap that once separated Google from its largest competitor has been narrowed significantly. Whereas years ago improvements to scalability, client-side usability, and relevancy of contextual search results helped push Google to the front of the pack, this noticeable technological disparity has slowly evaporated over time. Given Bing’s relative success when it comes to shopping and travel searches, as well as its recent deal with Twitter and Facebook to improve search results for these services (Google struck a similar deal just two hours later), it looks as if both companies are attempting to aggressively expand their feature-sets and the scope of content being queried.

The most recent development is Google’s partnership with streaming audio service Lala and the MySpace-owned iLike. The deal promises to bring streaming music to the Google page, allowing users to listen to a song once-thru for free or to pay for repeated listens (10 cents for an online-only version, and $1 for a downloadable mp3). The technical details are still a bit sketchy, but if Google manages to integrate this into their search in a substantial way (audio search, store search, improved MySpace search and caching, etc.), then they’ll have managed to set the bar higher for content search and potentially make up for any shortcomings in other areas like their previous attempts at integrating their search with online merchants.

Google clearly recognizes the level of competition that Microsoft brings to the table with Bing, and as time goes on it will be interesting to see where these two tech industry giants focus their efforts.

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Bing takes search share from Google

Bing has started to take some search share from Google.

Yahoo has dropped from 20.1% in May to 19.3% in August. Google has dropped from a 65% share in May to 64.6% in August, which is only half of the market share loss experienced by Yahoo.

Microsoft, which started at an 8% share in May has increased to a 9.3% share in August according to the latest comScore search engine rankings.

The question remains to be seen if Bing's market share is from the advertising initiative and "I have to try it" factor, or if it's from actual customer satisfaction. If Bing's success is customer satisfaction then they will easily have a double digit share of the search market before the year is out. Satisfied customers tend to give great word of mouth advertising, which can only help Bing in the long run.

If Google continues to lose their market share at the same pace, while Bing grows at this pace, Bing should overcome Google around August of 2020. We'll be watching. (yes, we're aware this is faulty math)

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Bing Gains Ground - Sorry Yahoo

Google has held the lion's share of search volume for years now and it continues to grow. July numbers from StatCounter put the volume in the range of 77%. Yahoo follows with 11% and Bing is up a percent to 9.4%.

It would appear that Microsoft's huge advertising blitz (and a much improved product) have given them an upward growth curve. They're up 1.4% at the expense of Yahoo, which is down a percent.

The share of search dollars spent is also shifting up for Google, according to J.P. Morgan stats. Google captured about 72% of search dollars in the 2nd quarter of 2009. That's up almost 2% compared to the same time in 2008 - and the change is almost entirely at Yahoo's expense.

Mobile Search

The most surprising numbers come in the area of mobile search where Yahoo is strong at 34% of the the search market in the U.S. Google holds about 63% of the market, according to ComScore data.

Display Advertising

Where does Yahoo still outperform the others? Display advertising.

Yahoo controls 13% of the display ad views on content-network sites. Microsoft and Google lag behind at 5.5% and 1.3% respectively.

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Microhoo! - The Microsoft/Yahoo! Search Partnership

Microsoft(Bing) and Yahoo! announced a search partnership to begin in early 2010. You can read more at CNN Money. This partnership will put Bing search results from between 25-30% of total market share. Yahoo will still be responsible for attracting premium advertisers, no word yet direct effect this will have on PPC advertisers.

The search partnership has great timing as Bing continues to spend its way to popularity. This should lead to another swing of talk about the, now more interesting, Bing vs. Google competition. Although Google is still king, and will be for the foreseeable future, this is the first real competitor (as far as search share goes) they've seen this decade.

With Bing now a substantial piece of search results, will PPC costs in Google begin to become cheaper as advertisers shift budgets around? Or will advertisers even bother shifting budgets any more than they already have? Will the relatively low PPC costs of Yahoo! and Bing begin to cost more?

Plenty of questions around this merger, should make for an interesting 2010 for SEM.

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Microsoft Bing! Bomb? Boom?

Here's a very quick summary of events, just in case you haven't been following the soap opera courtship between Microsoft and Yahoo the last 2 years: Google is kicking their butts in search.

According to Comscore numbers, Google holds roughly 64% of all Internet Searches. Yahoo and Microsoft want a ticket to the ball but their search algorithms have long lagged behind Google's stronger ability to serve relevant results.

Enter Bing!

Microsoft decided to take the bull by the horns and write a new search algorithm - named Bing! The new engine launched the last days of May and reviews are in. They're mixed.

At First Scribe, we are relatively indifferent. The Bing engine seems to work, although it appears to fall for some old SEO techniques in the area of keyword-loaded directory structure. We are most impressed with the persistent search history feature and the image search but that doesn't seem to be enough for my staff to be using Bing any more than Google.

The Big Budget

Multiple news sources have stated the marketing budget for the launch of Bing between $80 and $100 million.

The payoff?

With a month of the open market behind Bing, Comscore is reporting that Bing received 8.4% of the Internet search queries in June, '09. Up from 8% in May. Google sat flat at 65% and Yahoo dropped from 20.1% to 19.6% in the same time frame.

What's the ROI?

It's always difficult to measure an ROI from such a broad-reaching marketing plan as this. However, we can tell you that many of us were looking for Microsoft's share to break the 10% range of search market share and they fell short of that expectation.

We have a suggestion -

Maybe Microsoft would have done well to spend a portion of the budget on a Google Adwords campaign.

Huh! Looks like they did. I wonder if they use Omniture Analytics:

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