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Microsoft announced earnings last night and i focused in a bit on their search specific numbers.
There weren't many blurps about it in the specific release besides for "search advertising revenue increased $514 million or 54%. Search advertising revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, increased 16%, primarily driven by growth in Bing, due to higher revenue per search and higher search volume." And this "search advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs grew 16% (up 17% in constant currency) with continued benefit from Windows 10 usage."
A Bloomberg article says "Bing is on track to generate roughly $5.3 billion in revenue for Microsoft's fiscal year ended June 30, based on the pace of sales during the previous nine months." Adding they are seeing a "43 percent growth in search advertising revenue in the nine months ended March 31 is not far off YouTube's 50 percent growth rate, UBS estimates."
So Bing is holding its own and I suspect most of the search advertisers reading this already know that. Not so much of the SEOs reading here.
I originally thought Microsoft would overtake Google one day and I was terribly wrong when I wrote that in 2005 or so. But they have grown tremendously after many attempts and a ton of money and resources. Competition is good.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
