Bing it on Illustratio:n Blue Website Buttons Credit: Legends Web Design

Bing it On – a marketing campaign by Microsoft’s Bing to challenge the Google user experience did not create market share movement in September according to ComScore.  As a share of total search, Google slightly increased while Bing stayed the same.

The “Bing it On” marketing is now hardly present, only found in a Google AdWords campaign.  This seems to indicate that the campaign no longer has the legs that it did on the outset.  If October comes and Bing hasn’t gained any market share, it probably indicates that the Bing It On campaign was ineffective, but why?

What if people don’t use Bing because it’s superior?

While the Bing It On campaign asserts that users prefer Bing over Google two-thirds of the time, I haven’t read anyone write about this challenge who preferred Bing (including myself).  In fact, a lot of people remarked at how similar the searches seemed.

Google has a stronger market share than when Bing began, showing the ineffectiveness of Bing to dethrone the king.  So why do people use Bing?

In general, Bing users are disproportionately older men (45+), and Bing enjoys a larger market share in the Pacific Northwest where it is heavily marketed (brandishing the jerseys of the Seattle Sounders FC futbol team as well as the Seattle Storm WNBA team).   Given those demographics, I wonder if the Bing audience is a generation / geographic population that holds an especially favorable view of Microsoft?  It’s an odd demographic for such a new(ish) service.

Not great news for next month either

The recent discovery by Sophos that Bing is not effectively filtering malware from its images is not a good sign for Bing, either.  It will be interesting to see if Bing’s share of market declines as a result.

Despite their advantages with social tie-ins and Microsoft’s willingness to invest crazy money into its development and marketing, Google has kept a reliable book of business.   Whatever the reason for adoption by these groups, it’s becoming obvious that Bing is not qualitatively differentiated from Google and it will take more than Bing It On to chisel away Google’s market share.

Photo Credit

Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

Jim Dougherty

@jimdougherty

Jim Dougherty

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • http://www.wonderoftech.com Carolyn Nicander Mohr

    Hi Jim, I wrote about Bing It On at The Wonder of Tech this week and conducted a poll of people’s results in the challenge. Interestingly, my poll results matched the results that Bing claims for the challenge. But a large percentage of people who took the poll on my blog said that nothing could make them switch from Google.

    I visited a Microsoft store earlier this week and was given a $25 gift card for taking the challenge so Microsoft is working hard on trying to make this marketing campaign successful.

    Bing won when I took the challenge, but it doesn’t have the search parameters I need. I often want to limit my searches to results for the past 24 hours, week or year. Bing doesn’t have a way to restrict search results by date.

  • Lori Rossini-Simonis

    Hi Jim, I took the Bing It On challenge just for kicks. I have previously tried Bing and have always switched back to Google. The Bing It On challenge allows you to enter your own search term or use one they provide. I’m not sure if the Bing-provided search terms are random or previously selected but, interestingly the searches Bing won out on were the Bing-provided search terms. When I entered my own search term Google won out. The search results were essentially the same in a slightly different order.

    Technically challenged as I am, I prefer Google for it’s sense of humor and creativity. It brings a “human” touch to a very non-human function. And, I guess I like that. I wonder if the Bing user demographic of older men (45+) are those whose search engine is by default Bing, and they either do not know how or, do not care to put out the effort to change it. After all, I probably never would have tried Bing had it not loaded as a default at one time.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=521165844 Darryl Erentzen

    I know from personal experience with SEO efforts that Bing, in addition to not being very good at filtering malware, also has trouble differentiating “Parked” sites and sites that only exist to drive affiliate programs from genuinely relevant search results.

    As a dabbler in affiliate marketing and experimental SEO, Bing is my best friend because it sends me all kinds of traffic, whereas Google most often successfully flags my crappy scams and relegates them to deep in the high-numbered back pages of the results.

    A pure marketing page will get great results for a few days and then gradually slip down in the rankings on Google, while on Bing the rankings can actually improve over time.

  • jimdougherty

    Interesting Carolyn! That’s a great insight into Bing, I hadn’t read a lot of positive feedback about Bing in this contest and I’m glad someone substantiated their insight. If they are ever able to leverage the social data that they have to make their results more personalized than Google maybe they would be able to convert more customers? It would be interesting if one of these companies were able to determine if Bing was superior and just not able to convert. If that’s the case maybe a marketing tact is the right way to try and gain market share? You definitely opened my eyes, Carolyn – thank you!

  • jimdougherty

    Wow Darryl – that was refreshingly honest! I’m sure that as Bing’s advertising product improves it will be necessary for them to start to make erratic updates to ensure that their advertising pipeline is full too! Thanks for the great comment.

  • jimdougherty

    First off, since I have you here let me tell you how extraordinary you are! Thanks for reading and commenting! I don’t know what drives Bing, I suspect that people who have Hotmail accounts or use Skydrive are more likely to? In any case, I agree with you… but I know that I am biased so I’m not a good bellwether. You however are a different story (as are the 66% of people who use Google for search). Thanks Lori – you’re the best!