Bing Search Engine is Now # 2 Ahead of Yahoo While Google Remains # 1

In August 2010, MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search overtook Yahoo as the number two search engine in the US for the first time, according to new data from The Nielsen Company.

Bing Search Share Rose 30% from 2009

MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search held a 13.9% share of US searches in August 2010, narrowly beating Yahoo, which slipped to third place with a 13.1% share.



However, looking back to July 2009 gives a fuller picture of the divergent paths being taken by MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search and Yahoo. While Bing increased its US search share by an impressive 30% from 10.7% between July 2009 and July 2010, Yahoo decreased its share by a substantial 18% from 16%.

Google is Still #1

While longtime leading US search engine Google is no doubt paying close attention to Bing’s fast ascent since its June 2009 launch, Google still dominates the US search market by a comfortable market.
Google held 65.1% search share in August 2010, up 1% both month-over-month and year-over-year. It is also worth noting that Microsoft Bing officially started powering part of Yahoo searches starting in August 24, 2010. If Bing-powered search in August were combined pro-forma, it would represent a 26% share of search.
On a year-over-year basis, Ask.com significantly increased its search share growth rate while AOL experienced a substantial negative growth rate, but both providers still only account for about 2% of the total US search market each.
Bing Makes July Inroads

Google lost slight monthly US search market share to Bing in July 2010, according to recent data from Compete. Google maintained its dominant hold on the US online search market in July 2010 with 10.46 million queries, good for 72.9% of 14.34 million total queries. While this marked a 0.6% year-over-year improvement from 72.5% in July 2009, it was a 1.1% month-over-month decline from 73.8% in June 2010.

Third-ranked Microsoft (which primarily reflects the Bing engine) appears to have stolen some of Google’s monthly traffic. Bing recorded 1.52 million queries in July 2010, earning 10.6% market share. This was a 3.1% month-over month improvement from 10.3% share in June 2010 and more impressively, a 21.1% year-over-year improvement from 8.7% market share in July 2009.
Second-ranked Yahoo appears to have lost yearly share to Bing, although its monthly share increased. Yahoo reported 1.87 million queries in July 2010, 13.1% of the total market. Yahoo’s share rose 3% from 12.7% in June 2010 but fell 16.8% from 15.7% in July 2009.

It is time to start looking at Microsoft as a player in the search engine forum once again with adjustments made to Pay Per Click and SEO campaigns to focus on Google, Bing and Yahoo. 

Contact Internet Builder Consulting for your professional consultation on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Internet Marketing or Website Development today at 816-842-7774

Understanding Pay Per Click PPC Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing through use of Pay Per Click (PPC) ads is an effective method of placing any website in front of prospective clients without having to optimize or market the website. Companies with new websites, extremely old websites or websites which offer multiple services in multiple locations are best serviced through use of pay per click marketing. Search Engine pay per click marketing (Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft bCentral) is typically setup with a daily and/or monthly budget for the marketing campaign.

In traditional advertising marketers charge for a specific location in a magazine or newspaper in hopes that someone saw the advertisment based on a distribution number created by the company selling the advertising. This left much to be desired since the company selling the advertising was the same company providing the customers with the ‘distribution numbers’ estimating how many people might see the magazine or newspaper and hopefully view the advertisment inside of it. There was no true way to judge how many people saw the advertisment or what the return on investment was for the ad campaign. Online advertising, specifically pay per click (PPC) changed things with the pay for performance method of costs.

With PPC advertising a company only pays when the advertisment they show on the search engine is clicked on and a prospective customer is taken to the website to view the customer. When a customer simply views the ad on a search engine, without clicking, then there is no cost to anyone. Advertisers may setup a daily and monthly budget to spend for ads in addition to individual bids (yes bidding similar to ebay) for each search term or keyword phrase. A company or individual may bid for a particular phrase or set of keywords to have their advertisment show up when a search was done for those words on a search engine. The benefit is that advertisers pay for exactly what they receive while the detraction of bidding on keywords is that competitors can instantly outbid each other driving the costs up dramatically.

This means that ten companies may bid for the keyword phrase ‘Kansas City Website Companies’ all spending $1 per click to show up in the first ten advertising locations on a search engine. When ten more companies decided to bid on the same set of keywords they outbid the first companies for $1.50 per click or 50% higher cost per click. When the first set of companies see they have been outbid and their ads are no longer showing then they bid $2 a click or 100% more for the same traffic. Bidding sometimes becomes extremely competative when people or companies target a specific keyword phrase with no limit on how high the bidding goes for each click.

The benefit of Pay Per Click is that companies never pay for the branding/marketing aspects of having online users view the ad unless the online user actually clicks on the ad (thus pay per click). Online marketers sometimes neglect taking the time to search for the best ‘bang for the buck’ when setting up PPC accounts for clients. Builder Consulting spends several hours consulting with the customer to determine the top keywords and phrases then sets a specific budget for each term based upon the overall monthly goals and cost per click likelyhood of a return on investment. Keep in mind that any account setup with a daily and monthly budget will not show all ads all of the time.

The rate at which ads are shown is based upon budgets, likelyhood of the ad delivering a click (more effective ads are shown more often), the number of advertisers paying for each search term and the remaining balance of a budget for each advertiser. Any individual or company can setup pay per click advertising in a matter of minutes, setting it up properly to requires experiance and an understanding of the overall concepts, goals and technical aspects of the systems to provide a true return on investment.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Offices

Return on Investment (ROI) from Online Marketing

In 1999 Yahoo went public and quickly became the top Search Engine used by millions of Internet Buyers worldwide. Microsoft Network (MSN) and America Online (AOL) were the top competitors with little heard about Google. Move forward to 2008 and Google has become an adjective “Do You Google?” or “Google it” commanding 60% of the online searches. Naturally businesses and Internet Marketing companies spend the majority of online budgets on Google AdWords pay per click advertising. Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft bCentral are often overlooked or ignored missing millions of potential buyers.

The largest is not always the best and marketing dollars should be invested where the best Return on Investment will be accomplished. Advertisments for ‘Kansas City New Homes’ on Google AdWords can cost up to $3.85 per click reaching 60% of the online users. The same advertisment on Yahoo averages $1.31 per click with 18% of online users. with a mere 14% of online users Microsoft bCentral advertising will cost $1.12 per click. A monthly budget of $500 would give:

• 129 clicks (potential buyers) from Google
• 381 clicks (potential buyers) from Yahoo
• 446 clicks (potential buyers) from Microsoft bCentral

Others considerations for online marketing are demographics and usage – consider that Yahoo became the top Search Engine 8 years ago and remains the top destination for finance and business users. Google has the largest porportion of teenage users making it perfect for marketers wanting to sell IPOD’s, concert tickets or Teen Magazine. Researching the demographics to ensure your marketing dollars are reaching the proper audience is more important than the total number of users on a specific search engine. Pay Per Click alone is not an effective long term marketing solution. Pay Per Click is effective for targeted traffic with a set budget yet will constantly cost more for less results or traffic as others bid against you for the top spots.

Developing a professional website incorporating the key aspects of design, Search Engine Optimization, navigation, usability, content, purpose and one-click call to action opportunities is the best overall solution. Investing more in expert website services will reduce the costs required for constant paid listings when your website shows up naturally online. Websites listed through pay per click that are poorly designed or ineffective are PAYING to exclude themselves from buyers!

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
http://www.BuilderConsulting.com