When the Microsoft owned search sites changed their names to “Bing” a year and a half ago, it was fairly clear that this ground-up restructuring was their all-in effort to survive the war against Google. Now, after a partnership with Yahoo and a large push to get users to the Bing site, we’re safe to ask the question: Have they?
A Mashable report provides the answer. Well, according to the figures presented by Microsoft at their Bing Summit earlier this month, things are definitely looking up. Bing has grown to about ninety million standard users, compared to the approximately sixty million users of Bing at its launch.
The comScore report on Bing seems to agree with this tremendous growth, stating that the search engine now owns 11.8% explicit market share compared to about eight percent at Bing’s launch.
Bing is doing especially well in specific sub-markets. The areas most targeted by bing, including shopping, travel, and music, have seen an even higher rate of growth than other areas of search. Music searches have especially dazzling figures, with an approximately 800% growth. Bing also seems to be gaining more loyal followers, with a claimed seventy-two percent increase in medium and heavy users.
In the mobile world, where Microsoft itself is struggling, it seems that the Bing search engine is fighting fit. Their mobile app, which has been recognized as one of the most mobile-tuned search applications available, has become one of the most popular on the iPod and iPad with 5.5 million total downloads.
There’s little doubt that Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar investment has allowed Bing to both grow and stay alive against the formidable Google giant. However, whether that can continue at the current pace is still in question. After all, you could cut Google in half and it would still outmatch the combined market share of Bingahoo.
