Bing’s share has gone from 21.4% to 21.6% while Google’s has decreased from 64% to 63.8%.
Why the gain and should Google be worried about a .2% drop when they hold more than double the market share of the nearest competitor?
The continued growth of Windows 10 could be having an effect as Bing has integrated it throughout their entire desktop operating system.
As SureFire partner Jeremy Templer recently reported, Bing states that 24% of its searches are now voice search, which may lead to you thinking it can be related to the integration with Apple’s Siri, but for these numbers comScore is only counting desktop searches.
On Windows 10 you can make a voice search from anywhere using the “Hey Cortana” voice command. The increase in uptake of the Windows 10 platform does give credence to the line of thought that desktop voice searches could be making up some portion of that 25%.
Why should you care?
While this data is from the US andGoogle’s market share is much higher in the NZ market, the Bing/Google battle for market share is worth continuing to follow.
Both companies are investing heavily in improving consumer experience. Google has just announced its Google assistant, an intelligent conversational search bot. At the same time, Microsoft is well down the path of building “Bing Concierge”, a bot that will be able to respond to users over platforms like Skype, Messenger, SMS, WhatsApp, and Telegram.
If Microsoft does a better job in building an improved, more relevant experience across multiple platforms it will no doubt continue to pick up market share piece by piece. As that share grows so will the opportunity for search marketers on the Bing platform.
Conversely for Google, continued investment is needed to maintain market share and deliver a comparable (or better) experience than their rivals.
We see this parallel regularly when introducing new clients to SEO. Often there is a misconception that SEO is a one-off project to bring the website up to date and once it is “SEO’d” they will be fine. We all need to remember that hard work is required to maintain dominance, position and market share in any business, including the business of SEO of your site.
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Glenn is a Partner and Senior Consultant who has had a very successful career building growth companies in the private equity arena. He has a wealth of experience in both the digital space and strategy development. Prior to becoming a partner in SureFire Glenn built one of the largest digital teams in New Zealand for a NASDAQ listed global online marketing company & Google's largest premium partner.
