According to Comscore numbers, Google holds roughly 64% of all Internet Searches. Yahoo and Microsoft want a ticket to the ball but their search algorithms have long lagged behind Google's stronger ability to serve relevant results.
Enter Bing!
Microsoft decided to take the bull by the horns and write a new search algorithm - named Bing! The new engine launched the last days of May and reviews are in. They're mixed.
At First Scribe, we are relatively indifferent. The Bing engine seems to work, although it appears to fall for some old SEO techniques in the area of keyword-loaded directory structure. We are most impressed with the persistent search history feature and the image search but that doesn't seem to be enough for my staff to be using Bing any more than Google.
The Big Budget
Multiple news sources have stated the marketing budget for the launch of Bing between $80 and $100 million.
The payoff?
With a month of the open market behind Bing, Comscore is reporting that Bing received 8.4% of the Internet search queries in June, '09. Up from 8% in May. Google sat flat at 65% and Yahoo dropped from 20.1% to 19.6% in the same time frame.
What's the ROI?
It's always difficult to measure an ROI from such a broad-reaching marketing plan as this. However, we can tell you that many of us were looking for Microsoft's share to break the 10% range of search market share and they fell short of that expectation.
We have a suggestion -
Maybe Microsoft would have done well to spend a portion of the budget on a Google Adwords campaign.
Huh! Looks like they did. I wonder if they use Omniture Analytics:
No comments:
Post a Comment