Search Engine Market Share: Hot Topic or Moot Point
By Josh WilliamsOct, 11, 2011
If you follow the search industry long enough, you'll begin to see a trend. Each month, around this time, you see extravagant headlines like these:
- Bing Catching Up to Google
- Google Market Share Takes a Hit
- Bing Chipping Away at Search Giant
This makes for great conversation and can really pump up the page views, but is it really true? Is Bing really gaining that much ground? Let's take a look at a few things.
Long Term Market Share Changes
Sure, Google may have lost a fraction of a percentage point in any given month. But even if Google takes a hit of a few percentage points, does that mean Bing is destined to take over? Search Engine Journal recently released an infographic mapping out some of the differences in the "Big Three" search sites which includes this great chart:
From the looks of this data, Google doesn't seem to be hurting too bad. Their market share has risen from about 53% in the beginning of 2007 to just over 60% in early 2011. Bing and Yahoo combined had a market share of over 35% back in the day, but now they're just skirting 30%. It seems that if anyone need fear Bing, it's Yahoo.
Sustainability
Neat fact: did you know, Bing loses about $462,962 per hour!
Wait, what?
Microsoft has lost around $9 billion since they began tracking search engine profitability in 2007. They're banking on changing the way people think about search engines. I'm not sure it's working.
Conclusion
There is a version of our future where Bing could be a serious contender. Bing/Microsoft could buy Yahoo and move beyond their "search alliance". They could plug the holes in their wallet. Microsoft is also supporting antitrust legislation against Google (even though they do the same things Google is accused of). For Bing, gaining market share beyond the 30-35% mark is going to take a lot of work.