Bing-Powered Search Continues to Gain Ground, Holds Lead in Success Rate
The latest numbers from Experian Hitwise are in, and it’s another batch of good news for Yahoo and Bing. As Bing-powered search gained market share in July, Google lost market share.
According to Hitwise, Google finished July with 66.05 percent of U.S. searches, down 2 percent from its 67.12 percent share in June.
Meanwhile, Yahoo finished with 15.07 percent of U.S. searches in July, up 4 percent from its 14.49 percent share in June. Bing finished the month with 12.98 percent, down 2 percent from its 13.19 percent share in the previous month.
This means that Bing-powered search claimed 28.05 percent of the U.S. search market in July, up 1 percent from its 27.68 percent share in June.
Hitwise also measure “success rates” for the major search engines. According to Hitwise, executed searches that result in a visit to a website are counted as “successful.”
Yahoo boasted a success rate of 81.36 percent in July, virtually unchanged from its 81.63 percent success rate in June. This means that 81.36 percent of searches conducted on Yahoo resulted in a visit to a website.
Bing followed with a success rate of 80.04 percent in July, down 1 percent from its 80.60 percent success rate in June.
Google trailed with a success rate of 67.56 percent in July, up 1 percent from its 66.63 percent success rate in the previous month.
“The share of unsuccessful searches highlights the opportunity for both the search engines and marketers to evaluate the search engine result pages to ensure that searchers are finding relevant information,” the report noted.
Hitwise also noted that longer queries – those averaging 5-8 words or more – saw a 3 percent month-over-month boost in July. One-word searches were still the most popular, accounting for 25.32 percent of all searches.
“Facebook” was the top search term for the four weeks ending Aug. 6, according to Hitwise. The term accounted for 3.46 percent of search clicks during this time. “YouTube” followed with 1.09 percent, while “facebook login” accounted for 0.77 percent of search clicks.
Facebook was the top U.S. website for the four weeks ending Aug. 6, accounting for 10.35 percent of visits, according to Hitwise. Google followed with 7.99 percent, while YouTube had 3.35 percent.
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