During April, Bing reached a significant milestone in terms of its comScore market share, breaking the 20% market share barrier in the USA for the very first time. When the 12.7 percent market share enjoyed by Yahoo, a significant search alliance partner for Bing, is added in, the network’s market share is approaching 33 percent. This is an amazing achievement for the Yahoo Bing Network. It may still be a long way from Google’s 64.4 percent market share, but it is significant all the same. The network had a share of just 28 percent in December 2012, and their share has increased – while Google’s share has slipped from 67 percent down to today’s 64.4 figure. Most analysts expected to see Yahoo and Bing cannibalise each other’s market share rather than erode Google’s, so this latest performance is significant.
Yahoo and Bing Improving Their Service
It’s interesting to note that it’s not just search which is seeing Yahoo and Bing improve. The partnership have put a lot of effort into improving their ad network performance as well. Google AdWords has offered consistently higher click-through rates over the last year, with the average CTR for Adwords being 5.47 percent – more than double Yahoo’s average of 2.42 percent over the same set of verticals; however, this is something that the Yahoo Bing network has managed to improve too. In fact, the Yahoo Bing network is now a more appealing platform for many advertisers, because it offers a competitive CTR in some verticals combined with lower costs and less competition means that advertisers who do invest in the Yahoo Bing Network have the chance to enjoy far greater reach for their money.
Looking to the Future
It appears that in the future Yahoo and Bing will be making many more improvements. They are unlikely to become the dominant search network within the next few years, but their slow and steady gain of market share is noteworthy, and something that should be watched carefully. They currently control almost one third of the US search market, and that alone is impressive enough that it makes them worth targeting. Webmasters who want to reach as wide an audience as possible should start to pay attention to the SEO world beyond Google, and consider their advertising options as well. Search marketing is about to become a far more diverse field to work in.
