Bing vs Google

According to recent data, Google holds 88% of search engine UK market share (source Theeword.co.uk). This growth has been continual over the last 10 years, with no signs of halting – this growth means that businesses owners are frequently battling to overcome the growing demands of market competitors, changes to the algorithm, and ultimately to make their mark online.

Bing, owned by Microsoft, on the other hand has tried to muscle in on the search engine market, ploughing $60 million worth of investment and taking over MSN live search back in 2009. From the investment, Microsoft’s total searches increased 22% month on month, but they have since failed to maintain their challenge. Bing’s current market share in the UK is 7%, which is significantly smaller than Google, so why should businesses spend the time investing in improving visibility within the search platform?

For certain industries, particularly B2B markets, we’ve actually found that although traffic is lower than Google, the ROI and search intent is of much higher value than Google. Without 100% data driven knowledge, it perhaps points to certain industries that have Microsoft pre-installed within working environments and has Bing pre-set as their default search engine. This could be either have been done without their knowledge or they are unable to change browsers due to restrictions and regulations set by the company. There is also an element of a target audience to be factored into this, an older demographic and of a more senior role may be more inclined to make a decision much sooner.

Research & Analysis

Bing may not be the correct platform for certain industries, but Google Analytics allows us to see current traffic from Bing, keyword data and whether these have turned into direct sales – helping you to see if there is value in time investment.

This can be easily achieved by accessing the following within Google Analytics:

Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels

Select Organic Search from the channel grouping:

Select Source from primary dimensions, and then Bing from the list of search engines:

From here you will see all the keywords that have driven traffic through the platform along with other key metrics such as revenue, goal completions and conversion rate.

Depending on the data, you may see opportunities where certain keywords have driven a high amount of sales or traffic – from this data you can make a decision on whether Bing advertising would allow you to get more instant traffic and potential sales.

To summarise…

Despite the lower market share compared with Google – it’s worth spending time analysing your web analytics traffic, to identify whether Bing should become part of your digital marketing strategy. If you are interested in finding out more about digital marketing in general – don’t hesitate to get in touch!