
“Bing is bigger than you think,” Microsoft boasts, at 33% of US searches - artsandsci
https://www.onmsft.com/news/bing-ads-tweets-search-market-share-numbers-bing-is-bigger-than-you-think
======
random023987
And how many of those searches are initiated by MS spyware that watches what
you type in the start menu?

(If you have a Windows computer with default privacy settings, press the Start
key; type a few letters. You just "searched" Bing)

~~~
nolok
Aren't Firefox/Ubuntu/Chrome doing the same for Google (eg type a few letters
and they search for suggestions in their local db [bookmarks, history, ...]
but also make a remote search for more) ?

Not saying this as anti-Google, pro-Microsoft or pro/anti anyone, merely
agreeing with you that the "% of {area|time|...} search" means absolutely
nothing.

Especially in the context that matters for potential Bing customers, aka ads
buyers: I don't care about how many search there are, I care about how many
people can see my ad.

Of course no big search entity has any interest of giving those "real search"
numbers, neither the front runner nor the underdog.

~~~
skizm
I'd argue people know (even expect) they are searching Google when they type
in a browser address bar. No one wants Bing search results when they type in
the start menu.

~~~
perfectstorm
> No one wants Bing search results when they type in the start menu

I don't understand why people speak for the whole population. I'm sure MS runs
Analytics for these and would've killed it off if "no one" wants it.

~~~
herbst
This does not sound like a thing Microsoft would do at all. It is one of those
small annoyances people just will get used to

------
pmoriarty
My mom has a Windows laptop which she uses without even really understanding
what a web browser is, or what a search engine is. She uses Bing because
that's what the Windows search bar defaults to and because the default web
browser on Windows by default opens with MSN as its home page, and she doesn't
understand she has a choice in any of this, and probably wouldn't bother to
change anything even if she did understand and knew how to change it.

I strongly suspect that many Bing users are similarly borderline computer-
illiterate, and just use Bing because it's the default.

The same probably goes for many Google users, a lot of whom were probably
tricked by some software they installed that had a tiny checkmark and small
print telling them it was going to install Chrome and make Google their home
page.

~~~
boto3
I think the demographics that just use the default search engine are probably
most desirable for the advertising publisher as they are more likely to click
on ads.

~~~
dumbfounder
Advertisers aren't looking for the most likely to click, they are looking for
the most likely to convert. Clicks cost money so they only want to pay for
people that are highly targeted. This is why search advertising is so
powerful, it is about matching the intent of the user (their search terms) to
products and services, and getting them at the right time (when they are open
to new paths).

~~~
visarga
Search ads are powerful for targeting users, but branding requires FB kind of
ads.

------
orng
Search is such an integral part of how we use the internet today and a vast
improvement of the link sites and books from 20 years ago.

Competition in this space has never been more important, in particular in
light of recent news of censorship from google and various big companies.

Although I personally use DDG I applaud anyone that tries to compete with
google and I hope that Microsoft won't give up on Bing.

Edit: typos

------
cyphar
Some things to note:

* The Amazon Echo uses Bing as it's default search engine, which almost certainly explains why the US has so much larger usage than other countries (since Amazon is so big in the US).

* Windows' search bar feature searches the internet by default with Bing. As an aside, it's interesting to me how bad the backlash was on Canonical for doing this a few years ago, but it appears most Windows users don't care.

* Edge uses Bing by default, and a not-insignificant number of internet users likely don't know (or care) to change their default search engine. Hell, some people probably just Bing "google" and then use Google. I've seen my grandparents do that before.

So really these statistics seem to be quite misleading.

~~~
thephyber
> So really these statistics seem to be quite misleading.

I would argue it's less that they are misleading and more that people are
still learning that there is more than one way to initiate a search.

Do most people know that typing in the Windows Start Bar initiates a web
search?

~~~
cyphar
> Do most people know that typing in the Windows Start Bar initiates a web
> search?

I hope so, or otherwise we would have to decide that making local search
functionality ping the internet is unethical[1]. I'm only half joking of
course, but it's more than a little worrying that there isn't more outrage
about this.

[1]: [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/01/ubuntu-online-search-
feat...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/01/ubuntu-online-search-feature-
disabled-16-04)

------
thanatropism
Unpopular to admit here (unlike, say, reddit): Bing is useful for pornography,
Google is not.

Hi, my name is thanatropism and on occasion I look at pornography. Throw eggs
at will.

~~~
hacktothefuture
Purely for academic reasons of course, why is Bing better suited for this
purpose?

~~~
vincengomes
It's because Google is better at hiding such results and it's impossible to
completely turn off safe search. So Bing by being the major player left is
better for such searches.

------
billmalarky
No duckduckgo is bigger than you think.

They'll be at a billion queries per month early next year most likely.

1/12 the size of bing may not sound like much, but I believe it's still run by
just a few fulltime employees (fair amount of part-timers). Plus DDG isn't
burning a billion dollars a year to compete with Google.

[https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html](https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html)

~~~
xutopia
How do they plan to make money?

~~~
naturalgradient
I understand they are already profitable:

[http://fortune.com/2015/10/09/duckduckgo-
profitable/](http://fortune.com/2015/10/09/duckduckgo-profitable/)

~~~
lioeters
Thanks for this link, it's a short article but I hadn't heard about it. I
switched my default search engine to DDG about a year ago (occasionally using
!g syntax for Google search), and really appreciate their service. I'm glad to
hear they've found a profitable model that doesn't need to track users.

~~~
boyce
If you want better privacy try !s instead

------
StronglyTyped
This is because when I go to the start menu and start typing the name of the
application I'm looking for, a large percentage of the time the Cortana search
process is corrupted and my start menu is not searched, instead, I get an Edge
window opened with a Bing search for "Photoshop"

I don't trust those numbers at all.

~~~
verall
I recently learned this is possible to turn off from the settings as something
like "search Internet for results". Probably the most annoying feature of
windows 10, hit enter quickly enough and its always a bing search because it's
too fast for local..

------
detritus
Here in Blighty, with a lot of companies still muddling on with the barest
handle on web marketing, I've found Bing much more useful than Google for
finding companies supplying materials or goods that aren't exactly 'exciting'.
A lot of small - medium-sized industry output, for example.

Just this last year I've added Bing to my [hardcoded] homepage and found two
'things' that I've been hard-pushed for literally years to find a non-
American/German supplier for.

It's fashionable and fun to bash Microsoft, but I can't say I'm much-amused by
the utter stranglehold Google has on my internet usage otherwise (my fault, I
know).

Let's give Bing a chance.

~~~
googlryas
Can you give an example of what you're talking about? Or what those two things
are?

~~~
fnordian_slip
At the risk of being off-topic: ""Blighty" is a British English slang term for
Britain or often specifically England"

Just because that might be a thing that other non-native speakers are
unfamiliar with (I always thought of my English as pretty decent, and never
heard of it).

Also I second the request for further information.

@topic: I find it hard to believe that Bing actually amounts to much in terms
of organic searches, but that might be my filter bubble speaking.

I have recently been trying to use more different search engines, but the
habit of just googling everything is hard to break. Other than the obvious
candidates, can anyone recommend any search engines we are missing because
google is so dominant?

Someone recently recommended
[https://millionshort.com/](https://millionshort.com/) to me, but I haven't
used it enough to have an opinion on.

------
theonemind
I like the bing video search and image search. I normally get much better
results with google for text searches. Does anyone find bing the best engine
for anything besides video and image search?

~~~
cosmie
Probably not what you meant, but it's definitely the best engine for B2B PPC
advertising. It's a veritable goldmine for B2B marketing thanks to corporate
policies forcing IE/Edge and leaving Bing as the default, combined with most
advertisers focusing on Google instead.

------
seanalltogether
IE and Edge seem to make up about 10% of market share, while the rest goes to
chrome, safari and firefox, which all default to google and yahoo
respectively. I'm surprised that so many people would be changing their
default search engine to make bing that popular.

~~~
paulryanrogers
Bing Rewards pays people to search in the form of Amazon and other gift cards

~~~
Brendinooo
Yeah, a cursory search of my inbox says that Bing Rewards has paid me about
$165 in Amazon cards since 2012, and I've got another $20 or so in credit
waiting to be redeemed.

In a world of "good enough", getting the occasional payout is incentive enough
to switch from Google, especially when Firefox makes it so easy to switch
engines for a query if the first search doesn't work out.

------
tsycho
Other commenters have commented on how the data is biased/cherry picked, and
Google would have a different take on the market share numbers.

However, it might be more to Google's benefit to say nothing and use this as
evidence of not having a dominant majority share if there is a monopoly
lawsuit against them in the US. In fact, I suspect that losing the Firefox
search default might actually be beneficial to Google for the same reason.

------
juice_bus
A few days (?) ago they also boasted that 70% of users are "ok" with their
telemetry, or is it 30% haven't figured out how to turn it off?

Or in this case, haven't bothered to switch to Google on IE/Edge?

~~~
thisacctforreal
this is the source I could find
[https://m.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/09/microsofts_privacy_en...](https://m.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/09/microsofts_privacy_enhancements/)

------
Haul4ss
It is entirely possible Bing's market share is improving because Bing itself
has improved.

------
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6
I totally understand the reason why Microsoft wants to push Bing, I do.
However, unfortunately (for us Finns at least) Bing search results are simply
awful, almost incomprehensibly so. I could swear Google offered a better
search 15 years ago (not that the situation is fully comparable).

Add the total lack of additional features (not too long ago it lacked even a
simple calculator, or at least failed to reliably show it) results in what is
simply a very poor user experience for any user. My very much tech-illiterate
relatives can only articulate to ask why the “search in their new computer” is
so bad they always have to manually go to Google after almost any query.

------
xutopia
I trust nothing Microsoft says. They have a history of fudging numbers and
hiring PR firms to publish studies that show them as cheaper or better than
they really are.

~~~
harrygeez
And you think Google is any better? I have lost count how many times when I
try to install something and Chrome got bundled together without even
prompting me. Latest version of CCleaner is a prime example.

------
captainmuon
Bing is my go-to search engine when I'm in China, and don't have access to a
VPN. Most of the time, it gets the job done just as good as Google. Sometimes
the results are even a bit better, but sometimes much worse, with the results
not relating to the thing I'm searching for at all. It's hard to describe and
I don't have an example at hand, but it's these failures that make it really
frustrating. Sometimes I wish you could report a search as particularly bad,
so that some human employees would have a look and manually move the for
humans obviously correct result to the top.

------
ringaroundthetx
When I am cyberstalking (or want aggregate information about any particular
topic) I use Bing.

On the other hand, Google makes waaaaay too many assumptions about what I
want. When I really want to scour the internet.

------
Thaxll
Yahoo is only used in the US, in Europe it's all about Google.

------
rb808
I use Bing, its nice to support someone that competes with Google to avoid
that company getting a complete monopoly.

They also give rewards so I get my $5 voucher every few months which is handy.

~~~
hacktothefuture
This! I recently decided to try out Bing purely to see if comparing the
results of both engines resulted in disparities like I had seen in the past. I
was presently surprised to see that Bing results were pretty much on par with
Google in my most common type of searches. The rewards program was a nice
little bonus on top of it and decided to give them a try. The results are good
quality. It isn't as fast as Google but not slow enough to halt my experiment.

Mostly, I like the competition idea. If using Bing for a while keeps Google on
their toes and helps improve Bing as well, then I think its a win, win, win.

------
Gaussian
I have seen analytics data for dozens of big sites and I have never seen
numbers to even remotely support 33% to Bing. I have little doubt that MSFT is
basing this on some form of data, but I'm guessing there is a twist or caveat
in here somewhere. EDIT: For content sites and e-commerce sites, I see ratios
that are between 18:1 and 50:1 for Google:Bing. Long way off from 33%.

------
davidgerard
I've consistently seen searches coming from Google at >95% of search hits on
all my blogs. Where are these invisible Bing searchers?

~~~
avs733
they aren't using Bing to search for your blog, they (i.e., my mother) are
using Bing to search for Google.

------
thephyber
So to aggregate assertions in this thread, Bing powers:

    
    
      * Bing.com web searches
      * Yahoo.com search engine backend
      * DuckDuckGo.com search engine source
      * Windows Start Bar results
      * Default search engine for IE/Edge
      * Default search engine backend for Firefox
      * Amazon Echo web searches
      * Siri web searches
      * Facebook search bar web searches

------
laxatives
Probably a large part of that is because they are much more permissive to
bots/crawling than Google searches.

------
stevenh
Someone please explain how to search for exact phrases on Bing like you can
with quotation marks on Google. I've seen some claim that quotation marks work
the same way on Bing, but it isn't true.

------
throwaway13337
Has anyone seen numbers with bing search ads that make this at all likely?

I know that my experiments with bing search ads were cheap but so low volume
that it wasn't even worth bothering with.

------
unfunco
What percentage of those are people typing "google"?

------
amelius
Are there any substantial blogs out there covering the technology behind
search engines, including hypotheses about how Google works?

(I'm talking about real research, not SEO)

------
bluedino
I'm not surprised - you'd be amazed at how many 'regular people' have their
browser set to return Bing or Yahoo results

------
ecommerceguy
Bing / Yahoo make up 1.6% of our organic serp traffic and ranking is not an
issue. add: for the past week, according to ga.

------
skc
Bing search results are similar enough to Google's these days (for non
technical searches) for this to not be a surprise

------
0xFFC
huh, Wait to get a load of Microsoft research. Microsoft combined its research
branch with its search branch last year if I remember correctly.

And Microsoft research is far superior compared to others. Just look how many
people with h-index 50+ does work at Microsoft and compare it with Google.

------
humanrebar
Why are countries like Paraguay, Uruguay, Russia, and Panama not on their
maps?

------
thomasthomas
what is defined as a search? searching within social networks is most
definitely a 'search' but probably not counted. I would estimate almost half
my daily searches are on a social network.

------
s3nnyy
Bing doesn't seem to have SSL enabled by default. That's weird.

------
zyang
Is Siri search counted in the stats?

~~~
frandroid
Most probably... They'll use anything they can to boost their market share
numbers.

~~~
freehunter
Is it really as nefarious as you make it seem? Is Google allowed to count the
number of browser that have Google search built in? Are they allowed to count
Android phones where Google search is the default? Why would Bing not be able
to count searches done on there just because they're done via Siri?

~~~
frandroid
I'm not saying it's nefarious, I'm just saying they're desperate to show as
large a market share as they can claim to. I used to work at Microsoft on MSN
and helping Bing boost its numbers by all means necessary was job #1 by the
time I left. Some of the means were not quite kosher.

------
junkculture
I switched to ddg and know lots of others who did too. DDG uses Bing.

~~~
yammajr
My understanding is that Duck Duck Go uses a whole bunch of sources, including
but not limited to Bing.

[https://duck.co/help/results/sources](https://duck.co/help/results/sources)

------
neilalexander
Only bigger than you think because of the massive population of people who
don't know how to change their web browser search provider, or their web
browser altogether.

------
En_gr_Student
Before google they were running higher than 33%. They fell down flat on their
faces because of the union of greed, technical illiteracy, and market
illiteracy among managers/leaders.

~~~
freehunter
Wait, before Google search existed Bing was doing better with search results?
I don't think Bing existed back then. Even MSN search didn't exist back then.

