Bing Takes Baby Steps Towards Catching Google
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
A journey of a thousand miles, begins with a single step.
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
It’s always the darkest before the dawn.
Whatever the cliché being thrown around in Redmond, it must be working, because Bing’s US search share continues to nudge ever upwards.
According to comScore’s data, Bing climbed from 11.3% to 11.5%, likely stealing that share from the "we’ve given up on search" Yahoo, which dropped from 17% to 16.8%.
The only kink in Microsoft’s plan to catch Google? Google’s share increased too–up from 65.4% to 65.5%.
Twitter’s Traffic Up 9%, Thanks To Google
VentureBeat reports Twitter has increased their traffic by 9 percent from December to January. After deeper insight from ComScore and Hitwise, it appears that most, if not all, came from Google.
When Google added real-time results to their search interface in December, it had a major impact on people discovering Tweets in the search results. [...]
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75 Million Visitors to Twitter in January
Yup, this measurement from comScore of 75 million people visiting Twitter in January of this year does not take into account those accessing the service through third party apps. Isn’t it nice to get that out of the way right from the start?
Fresh off the news that in January Twitter served over 1.2 billion tweets there is little surprise in a growth chart that looks like this courtesy of TechCrunch and comScore
When you cut to the chase on this though, the question about Twitter has to be less about quantity and more about quality. As more and more of the mainstream begin to discover and possibly embrace Twitter (have you had any “I don’t get that Twitter thing at all” comments from people who are not like you?) the pure volume of visitors, users and tweets will continue to rise. What might not rise is the legitimate information that is in the cacophony of tweets. If it becomes harder and harder to mine and make sense of Twitter’s stream then it won’t matter how many people visit.
Twitter has done it’s part though by moving forward and making the overall experience more useful
Large sites like Twitter and Facebook before it tend to grow in step-like patterns, with bursts of growth followed by periods of flatness during which the site absorbs its new users and adapts to their needs. Twitter has certainly been improving the functionality of its own site, with the rollout of new features such as local trends, a better suggested user list, Twitter Lists, and the Retweet button. Maybe all that work is starting to pay off.
So how do you feel about Twitter today? I ask about today because the tide turns so rapidly in this space that even attempting to predict the future of anything is an exercise in futility. Obviously, no one has a crystal ball (except of course that broker who keeps calling you with “hot tips”) but to call how the social media landscape will play out over any extended period of time is a crap shoot at best.
Your take?
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Boing Boing Bing: Was Bing Up or Down for Dec?
Two out of three online measurement firms agree: Bing lost ground in December. Experian Hitwise and Nielsen saw Bing’s search share decrease from November, while comScore saw it grow.
comScore saw Bing grow 4% from 10.3% to 10.7% (and Yahoo, Ask & the rest lost some). Hitwise, however, reported that Bing saw a 4% decrease in December (0.42 percentage points, coming in at 8.92%), as did Yahoo (0.56 percentage points, now 14.83%) and Ask (0.11 percentage points, now 2.54%). Google, naturally, grew 1% (0.68 percentage points, 72.25%). Nielsen reported an 8% drop in Bing’s share (0.8 percentage points, 9.9%), while Yahoo saw a 6% drop (0.9 percentage points, 14.4%).
Comparing the data to May (the last month of Microsoft/Live search before Bing’s launch) yields somewhat different results. Nielsen shows that Bing gained 0.5 percentage points by December, while Hitwise shows they’ve gained 3.28 percentage points. comScore says they’re up by 2.7 percentage points over that period.
However, all the measurement firms agree that Google was up and Yahoo (and Ask) slightly down in December. If Bing’s success is coming at Yahoo’s expense, will this bode well for their deal?
We saw lots of early reports that Bing was growing its market share, but after six months, are the results as dramatic as you expected?
comScore: Bing Share Up – Will It Overtake Yahoo? Plus, Ask.com Sale Speculation Returns
According to comScore’s December search numbers (now being circulated by various financial analysts), Ask is down slightly, so are AOL and Yahoo. Google and Bing are up. Here are the new comScore figures, which will be formally released today or Monday:
Google: 65.7 percent
Yahoo: 17.3 percent
Bing: 10.7 percent
Ask: 3.7 percent
AOL: 2.6 percent
Compare the recent Nielsen data [...]
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US Holiday E-Commerce Spend Up 4% Year Over Year
The numbers are in according to one tracking firm, comScore, which tell us just how good, bad or indifferent this past holiday season was from an online perspective. With a 4 % increase over last year I wouldn’t say good or bad and maybe not even indifferent. How about we’ll just take it because let’s face it, the economy still sucks.
The data covers the entire November through December time frame. There were some contributing factors that lent to the overall numbers being in the black. Here are some comScore observations.
“The 2009 online holiday shopping season was a positive one as its growth rate slightly surpassed our forecast and returned to solidly positive rates after nearly a full year of marginally negative growth,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Among the highlights of the season was the first $900 million online spending day and a strong late season spending surge, propelled by effective retailer promotions, guaranteed shipping and a major snowstorm on the eastern seaboard that convinced many to shop from the comfort of home. It’s possible that this better-than-expected end-of-year performance is a harbinger of renewed vigor and optimism for 2010 as the consumer economy seeks to rebound from one of the worst years in memory. At the same time, we need to remember that consumers’ spending power remains constrained by high unemployment levels, substantial debt and a new-found desire to save.”
Drat that new-found desire to save! Wonder if the government is catching on yet but I digress. The chart below shows just how consumers were willing to wait longer to make their purchases. That may be attributed to waiting to see if any deals would show up or just that people waited to make sure they could afford to actually buy things.
There were a few categories that made significant gains over last year’s really crappy results. Here’s a ‘look see’ at some of the top performers.
At this point in time I think anyone will breathe at least a small sigh of relief when any shopping numbers have a plus sign in front of them these days? What do you think?
Yahoo Top News Site, Google Second; People Spending More Time With Fewer Sites
According to November comScore data (published by TechCrunch) Google News is the second largest online news property in the world in terms of traffic. Yahoo ranks as the top global news site. Here’s the partial comScore list:
Yahoo News
Google News
New York Times sites
CNN
China’s QQ.com
BBC
MSN
In the US Yahoo still ranks as number one but Google News reportedly [...]
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November Search Share: Google, Bing Up, Yahoo Down
Both comScore and Nielsen put out November search numbers that show Google and Bing up and Yahoo losing share. According to comScore:
Americans conducted 14.4 billion searches in November, up 1 percent from October. Google Sites accounted for 9.5 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.5 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.5 billion), Ask Network (548 million) and [...]
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From Russia, With Chat?
AOL continues to travel into the brave new world that it is venturing into as the lines have been cut that once attached it to TimeWarner. Of course, there will be a lot of scrutiny which often leads to criticisms but that’s just part of doing business. Another part of doing business as a solo act is to make sure that you lean more toward ‘lean and mean’ which may mean trying to shed some business units that are not going to be helping AOL address its core competencies (which is another matter seeking clarity so feel free to chime in if you are from AOL).
TechCrunch is reporting that ICQ, which was purchased by AOL back in the Roaring 90’s (I am not even sure that term makes any sense but I am sticking with it) is getting attention from Google and DST (Digital Sky Technologies) whose biggest splash in ’09 was giving more money to Facebook.
ICQ, which AOL acquired in 1998 for $400 million, has 33 million worldwide monthly users, according to Comscore. But 8.3 million of those are in Russia, where it hold the no. 1 spot for instant messaging. That explains DST’s interest. It also explains some of Google’s interest as they struggle to get a proper foothold in that market.
We concentrate heavily on the Internet marketing world for the English speaking world but the growth for companies like Google etc are in the large international audiences. Consider that Google has introduced 38 new search products over the last 70 days and language translation is heavily featured. Of course there would be significant interest in acquiring a ‘ready made’ audience in Russia.
Is DST thinking the same way for Facebook? Why not, especially when the rumored price for ICQ and its users was somewhere north of $250 million but not likely anywhere near its price of 11 years ago. It could be a true bargain.
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As with many business activities timing is an important part of the measure of success or failure. Since AOL is in a position to move ICQ and please its shareholders the timing may be right for a little showdown at the Siberian Corral between DST and Google. Interesting: yes or nyet?
comScore: Google Breaks 65% Market Share But Did Bing Grow Share?
comScore released its October 2009 search share numbers and Google has passed 65% search market share, holding 65.4% share in October, up 0.5% from the previous month. comScore also claims that Microsoft Bing also gained 0.5% share, reaching 9.9%, while Yahoo dropped 0.8% to 18.0% from the previous month.
Nielsen also released its October 2009 [...]
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