Posted on 07/04/2009 10:35:48 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Microsoft's new search engine has made some gains, but not nearly as dramatic as the buzz might indicate, PC World reports, citing new research
Have you heard the news? Microsoft's Bing is taking a bite out of Google, boasting first-month market share gains while the competition's stronghold slips away! At least, that's what some headlines around the Web might lead you to believe this week.
The truth, though, is that the change is not nearly as dramatic as it appears at a glance. While Bing has, according to certain data, minimally increased Microsoft's search market share, Google's position has not significantly shifted.
BING VS. GOOGLE: THE BUZZ All the buzz comes from a new search market analysis by Web stats company StatCounter. Bing, the researchers say, secured 8.23 percent of all U.S.-based searches for the month of June. (Bing officially launched on June 3.) The previous month, StatCounter shows Microsoft sitting at 7.81 percent of U.S. searches. That amounts to a month-to-month increase of just under half a percentage point following Bings debut.
Google, during that same time span, dropped from 78.72 percent to 78.48 of U.S. searches—a decrease of 0.24 percent, according to StatCounter's data. Looking back to April, the difference becomes slightly less apt to be obliterated by a sneeze: Google's two-month drop amounts to 0.59 percent, while Microsoft's April-to-June gain comes out to 1.02 percent.
THE BING PICTURE The numbers, obviously, are quite small—but perhaps more important is the fact that zeroing in on such a short period of time makes it difficult to reach any real conclusions.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
It’s a great start. DEATH TO GOOGLE!
I save a lot of money with Bing’s cashback program, that’s for sure.
That said, I'm going to make the effort. Google, politically, sucks ass.
Oh brother. It’s been 30 days.
Slow day at Business Week? Or is there just not much to write about when the government is still working on the latest fascist takeovers and 5-year plan?
Dumb article. It’s a 5% gain for Microsoft in two months. How long did it take IE to gain market share on Netscape? How fast is Chrome growing on IE?
They have a cashback program? How’s that work?
Bing is horrible. I typed in my last name. It assumed, without asking, that I misspelled and then gave me wrong search results.
Never been an MS fan, but they need more time than this. Nice interface and fast.
Never been an MS fan, but they need more time than this. Nice interface and fast.
You use bing.com/cashback to search for a product. It shows you stores that participate in the cashback program, and the "end, post-rebate" price for the item you were searching for. Different stores give different percent of rebate - generally 3%, but ranging from 1% to 6%.
Sometimes it gives you a link - on the side - to an eBay search for the same product. If you use "buy it now" with a vendor that has the cashback symbol next to their item (a gold coin), you'll get (right now) 8% back.
Rebates take generally 60 days before they're applied back to your credit card or paypal account. No forms are required - it just happens automatically.
So by using the bing cashback program:
Cool! Thanks for the info!
.. 'course MS kowtows to the Chi-Coms also, I believe.
Remember during the 2004 campaign... you could google WMD and get a search result pointing to the White House instead. Google seems to support the case for liberal fascism... they do it through their presentation of news stories and in their search results.
bing has a long ways to go before it replaces google. I tried it several times and it never found what I was looking for.
Ping
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