Bing is up
According to Experian HitWise data for March 2011, Bing now accounts for 30% of all web search queries, marking a steady growth of the search engine’s traffic.
“While Bing certainly has no secret weapon in its quiver, the search engine has been bettering itself through a hundred minor improvements, which are perhaps now beginning to add up,” said Alex Wilhelm at TNW.
Bing rose from 28% in February to 30% while Google dropped from 67% to 64% of all web searches. Bing powers Yahoo! Search which accounts for roughly half of their traffic.
What is more interesting than the growth in size is how many users actually click on a search result to visit a website. HitWise data reveals almost a 20% higher chance that a user will click a link on Bing than Google. While 66% of Google searches result in a website clicked, 80% click out from Bing and 81%.
What this means for real estate
Realtors are relying more and more on generating leads from their website and Bing and Google do not have the same algorithm meaning that there is more than one rule maker in how to play the game of being found via search.
With the continued growth of Bing, agents will be hearing more about the site and must pay close attention to the changes the company makes as it impacts the websites you own and have invested time and money in. Could Bing replace Google? Probably not, but if this trend continues, they’ll be neck in neck in a year.
