Microsoft’s Bing Posts Second Week Of Gains
It’s week two and Microsoft’s Bing is still going strong. New comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) data indicates that for the second week in a row the relaunched search engine increased its search penetration as well as share of total search results. It’s still early, of course, and rival data from Compete.com has shown that Microsoft’s increase in search penetration has not come at the expense of its rivals, since many searchers are using Bing in addition to and not instead of Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Yahoo.
Still, considering where Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) was coming from, the new numbers are all definitely good news. In May, the last month before its relaunch, Microsoft’s share of the search market once again dropped, while Google’s reached an all-time high of 65 percent. The question though is whether any gains that Microsoft registers this month will be sustainable. As Barclays Capital Analyst Douglas Anmuth says in a report this morning, “Microsoft is better positioned in search now given a more competitive product, clearer brand positioning, and a potential tailwind from toolbar distribution partners Dell, HP (in the U.S.), and Lenovo, but we still don’t believe the product is that differentiated and we expect Google’s brand strength will help it maintain & grow share over time.”
The new comScore numbers on Bing:
Bing seeing gains should come as no surprise to anyone – that is what happens when you have a $100mm ad campaign and every media outlet talking about you. Once the buzz / ads stop then you can see what sort of impact Bing has had on the search wars – the question that needs to be asked then is if those people who tested out Bing kept coming back.