Is the Bing fad already over? Last month showed Yahoo and Bing declining in market share, but is this a hiccup or a trend?
Google gained about 1 percent in market share while Yahoo lost 5 and Bing lost 2 percent, according to an Experian Hitwise report. Bing has only been around a couple of months, and while the initial announcement got some buzz and increased market share for the Microsoft search engine, it’s possible that the new-engine smell is gone.
It looks like it’s time for Bing to start innovating, or it might settle back down into the small market share it’s had for years. With Yahoo market share also declining, both search engines need to pick up the pace, or combining forces in a partnership is going to scare Google even less than it already is.
Bing has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing since its launch. It’s time for them to realize it’s going to take more than a few commercials to make Bing a successful search engine; they’re going to have to do things better than Google. It isn’t about replicating Google and then marketing better; it’s about being better than Google and marketing better. Powering Yahoo’s search isn’t going to solve these problems, they have to create a product that is distinctly different than Google’s.
Bing has some opportunities to gain ground, but they have to be more aggressive. One area where Bing could capitalize is by buying up news. There has been talk of Bing trying to get News Corp. to deindex from Google, that’s a great start. If Bing could get major news outlets to remove themselves from the Google index, a huge chunk of users would probably move to a search engine where news was searchable.
If that doesn’t work, Bing will have to find something else. It’s about having something useful that Google doesn’t have. It won’t be easy, but innovation is the key to taking down a giant.
