Google has been the King of the search engine world for who-knows-how-long. Even today, given the fierce competition in the industry, it still manages to firmly keep being so. However, with the growth of the Microsoft Bing, Google’s dominance seems to have been gradually eroded by the new entrant.
Google vs. Bing: The Numbers
First, let’s talk numbers. In terms of market share ratio, according to Compete, from May 2010 to May 2011 Google has lost close to 16 percent of its market share, dropping to 63.6 percent from 73.9 percent in the overall search engine market, representing a 0.2ppt decline. At the same time, Microsoft Bing grew its share by 75 percent, jumping to 17 percent from 9.7 percent.
In terms of pure numbers of users attracted, there also seems to have been indication of Google’s relative decline in power. Google drew 138 million people to its site in May, compared with 162 million in May 2010, a drop of almost 15 percent. In contrast, Microsoft saw its visitors climb to 93 million last month, compared with 61 million in May of last year, a jump of 53 percent.
The number of search queries on each site also showed a gain for Microsoft, according to Compete. Google’s query volume fell to 9.5 million in May, compared with 10.8 million a year ago, a 12.4 percent loss. The number of queries for Microsoft rose to 2.5 million last month from 1.4 million last May, an increase of 78 percent.
Google vs. Bing: The Moves
Do the numbers really prove Google’s losing market share to Bing? Could it be because of the fast growth of other search engines? According to Compete’s data, this explanation is implausible, as the other three search engines monitored, Yahoo, Ask, and AOL, grew only slightly in the past year, so Bing’s gain of market shares has to be resulted from the losing thereof of Google.
Is that a big deal then? According to Byron Acohido, some search experts say that those results are anything but trivial in the current competitive landscape. Google’s recent renovations also testify to how seriously the search giant takes the matter. From Android, to the new Panda algorithm that is supposed to bring better search results, to Google + the Google social medium, and even to the weird look of the Google front page, Google is making every effort to maintain its competitive advantage.
A full moon can only wane. Has Google grown into that full moon? What is going to be the result of Google versus Bing? We can only wait and see.
