In today’s world the terms ‘Search’ and ‘Google’ have become synonymous. Comparatively, Google’s main search engine competitor Bing is seldom taken seriously. Behind the scenes Bing is slowly but surely establishing itself in the search market. Today Bing is the second largest search engine in the United States whose search query volume has just exceeded 20% for the first time.
Have you ever performed a search on Siri – the iPhone voice recognition system? Well if you have, you searched on Bing, probably without even realising it – Bing has been Siri’s default search engine since iOS 7.
Recently Bing has signed a 10-year agreement to provide search listings and ads to AOL as of January 1 2016; an acquisition which has gone largely under the radar. The purchase of AOL back in 2002 was a huge factor in Google’s rise to the domination of search. Today AOL accounts for only 1% of search traffic; so its loss will hardly make a dent in Google’s massive 65% share. Nevertheless it is still a great acquisition for Bing as they begin to chase after the market leaders.
Bing has also been busy with Bing Shopping Campaigns, a rival to Google’s Product Listing Ads. As of this July 2015 – Bing Shopping Campaigns are available for all US advertisers. Whether they will compare with the massive success of Google’s Product Listing Ads remains to be seen but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
In terms of paid search, we at Click Convert run a lot of Bing campaigns alongside AdWords. Bing benefits from a much lower Cost-Per-Click and therefore cheaper campaign costs. It’s also not uncommon to see Bing campaigns with a very high Click-Through-Rate compared to their AdWords counterparts. This all sounds brilliant but Bing comes with one vital flaw – volume. The volume of searches performed on Bing is still a fraction of that which comes through Google, therefore no matter how great your CTR is you won’t get anywhere near as much traffic. Bing has acknowledged this though and their purchase of AOL shows they are pro-actively trying to increase their search volume.
Bing certainly isn’t a replacement for Google when it comes to paid search but we at Click Convert see the two as partners rather than competitors, we use them in unison to cover as much of the on-line market as possible. Are you missing out on the rise of Bing? Contact Click Convert today and let us help you expand your sales to Bing and beyond.