Is 2016 The Year Bing Takes On Google?

Bing Gains Ground As Google Loses Browser Contracts

Bing has reached a record-breaking 21% share of the search engine market. Find out what this means in relation to the current market leaders, Google.

Imagine a world where we ‘Bing it’ to get the answer to a burning question rather than ‘Googling it’. 2016 could well be the year that sees this become a reality.

The Rise Of Bing

Bing, the search engine owned by Microsoft, is rapidly gaining ground on Google, who have been the dominant search engine giant for more than a decade.

Bing hasn’t always been a success story. In recent history, the Microsoft search engine was costing the company roughly $1 billion per quarter. There were calls by many to ditch the search engine market altogether. However, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella saw something in Bing that others did not and committed to investing in the service. His instinct has paid off and Bing is now making a profit of approximately $1 billion per quarter.

It is likely that the increase in profitability has come from the mass release and rollout of Windows 10 and Surface devices, both of which use Bing as their default search engine. Similarly the Windows 10 Mobile and Windows Phone operating systems are also pre-installed to have search results powered by Bing.

The Proof Is In The Stats

The search engine market share statistics speak for themselves. Bing has now reached a 21% share of the search engine market for the first time, whilst Google hangs on to a massive 64%. Google is of course still comfortably in the lead, but the speed at which Bing is increasing their grip on the market is likely to make them uneasy given that search results are Google’s core business.

An honourable mention should also be given to Yahoo who are hanging on to a market share of approximately 12%.

Companies Ditch Google

In January of this year, an enormous ten year contract begins between AOL and Microsoft, which sees AOL introduce Bing as their default search engine. AOL, which is now owned by Verizon had previously been using Google for their search results. Unfortunately, a comparable story occurred last year when Google also lost their contract with Mozilla, who chose to use Yahoo as the default engine in its browser. This was huge news at the time as it represented Google’s largest loss in search engine market share since 2009. 

Safari Traffic

In addition, there are rumours that Apple Safari, who currently use Google on their iPhone devices, might also be considering going with Yahoo, Bing or even their own in-house program. This would be a significant blow to Google, as reportedly more than half of mobile traffic in the USA comes from Safari, according to data collected in December 2014.

If Google continues on this downward spiral at the same time that Bing are on the up, then it’s only a matter of time before the two shall meet in the middle. However, when it comes to Google, it’s safe to say that they like a challenge and aren’t scared to shake things up. However, the same question was asked last year, and the change was not as dramatic as expected. Watch this space to find out what developments the current search engine market share leader will come up with to hang onto the crown in 2016.The post Is 2016 The Year Bing Takes On Google? appeared first on SEO Chat.
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