Search Engines & Market Shares
There’s no question which search engine dominates our current online landscape. We don’t “bing” a recipe for dinner, or “yahoo” the score of last night’s football game. To answer life’s pressing questions – we google. When Merriam-Webster officially added “google” as a verb in 2006, they were simply reflecting a sign of the times.
In terms of market share, Google has held strong around 67% for years. Bing continues to gain incrementally, coming in at 17.4% this year (over 15.4% last May). Analysts are inclined to say that Bing’s increase is at the expense of Yahoo! which fell from 13.4% in 2012 to 11.9% this year, but ultimately the stolen market share doesn’t mean much, as both companies are owned by Microsoft. Bing has been the search power behind Yahoo! since 2010.
Demographically, Bing and Yahoo! tend to target older individuals, but just last month Bing announced a new program called “Bing for Schools,” aimed at targeting the next generation of web surfers. Under the program, students will enjoy ad-free searches, and results screened for adult content. Micorsoft’s hope is to catch ’em young, build brand loyalty, and hopefully see their market share continue to grow.
What’s more, some businesses are finding Bing and Yahoo! offer good alternatives for advertising dollars. Cost per click campaigns with these smaller venues can cost half of what they might with Google, and since merging in 2010 the two companies share advertising. Ads paid for on one automatically appear on the other. Though the audience is smaller, the two engines together field about 30% of total search engine traffic, and you get both for the low price of one.
So while it’s unlikely that Merriam-Webster will update the definition of “bing” any time soon, it’s nice to know that the spirit of competition is alive and well in the world of search engines.