Frontline Perspectives

In May when Microsoft announced their new search engine, Bing, I wondered whether they could possibly make a dent in the Google fortress. Google is my personal preference, and the more relevant search tool for our B2B clients. That being said, we watch all the search engines to keep on top of optimization, and PPC opportunities.

So, I’ve been test driving Bing. I don’t love their interface (it’s too busy for me). I have been impressed with its results – and have been comparing it’s with results with Google (there is a difference). I haven’t been that impressed with their photo search – I like seeing the url displayed with the photo (perhaps just because I’m used to having it that way on Google?)

But here’s the real kicker… I’ve been watching the analytics reports for our client websites to see if/when Bing would show up. Sure enough, Bing was there in the July reports (less than 3%, but still there).

According to a comScore report in July, Bing accounted for 8.4% of online search activity in June. That’s a pretty strong start for the new kid on the block. That being said, Google is still king. The July report shows that Google still leads the pack with 65% of search activity, and Yahoo had 19.6%. Bing has a long way to go to be considered a major player.

But I’ll keep watching the analytics, and continue to test and review. I’ll be interested to see whether the initial searchers will stay with Bing, or go back to their past preference (old habits can die hard). If we continue to see this kind of growth, we’ll make more moves in our optimization strategies for clients to see what kind of impact the changes can make for relevant traffic.

I’ll keep you posted on my thoughts in the coming months.