Bing Managed Big Gain In October
November 12, 2009
According to new data from Experian Hitwise, October was the month of the underdog with respect to the search market. The two search companies that usually dominate lost a bit of share, while Bing (and to a lesser degree, Ask) gained ground.
Let's start with the success stories. Bing's market share rose from 8.96 percent in September to 9.57 percent in October, which represents an increase of 6.8 percent. That's nothing to sneer at, even if Bing remains solidly in third place.
Fourth-place Ask also made a small amount of progress as its share increased from 2.56 percent to 2.62 percent - a jump of 2.3 percent that's far better than a dip.
Meanwhile, Google came sort of close to losing its grasp on the 70 percent mark, slipping from 71.08 percent to 70.60 percent on a month-to-month basis. And Yahoo fared about the same, moving from a market share of 16.38 percent to 16.14 percent.
As always, it's not smart to read too far into a single month's search report. Still, Experian Hitwise also recorded a Yahoo loss (and Ask gain) in September, so a trend may be starting to emerge.
Have You Read This?
> Bing Gets A Bunch Of New Search Features
FriendFeed Gets a Lot of Traffic from Twitter
August 12, 2009
There is a lot of discussion going on about Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter, and real-time search. This is to be expected since yesterday it was announced that Facebook is acquiring FriendFeed.
Hitwise has shared some data regarding FriendFeed's popularity in the UK. It's growing fast, and has increased by 180% over the last 12 months in terms of traffic. It's nowhere near what Facebook or Twitter get, but Hitwise's Robin Goad says that "visitors to FriendFeed are typical early adopters – just the kind of people who were first to embrace Facebook, Twitter and a range of other social media success stories (as well as quite few failures along the way!)."
Hitwise provides a look at FriendFeed's clickstream in July, and it shows that Google, Twitter, and Facebook are the biggest sources of traffic. Twitter is actually a bigger source based on this data, which should make it all the more attractive to Facebook. It would be kind of like Google getting a good portion of its traffic from Yahoo.
Facebook intends to let FriendFeed continue operating independently. It's hard to say if Facebook's ownership will significantly contribute to the traffic of FriendFeed.com. The acquisition appears to really be more about talent, and Facebook will likely begin incorporating FriendFeed's technology into its own site. Either way, it's probably a good buy for Facebook.
You can read more about the Facebook/FriendFeed/Real-Time Search Picture in the following articles:
Facebook Just Became More Important to Search
Google Allows Hands-On Preview Of Caffeine Update
Why It's Not Wise for Your Business to Overlook FriendFeed
Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
Where's Bing's Real-Time Search?
