In a tale that could've been scripted by Shakespeare himself (if he were a tech enthusiast), the much-anticipated AI-powered Bing with Bing Chat burst onto the scene, promising to dethrone the search giant Google. Unfortunately, the story surprise is less "David slays Goliath," and more "Goliath chuckles at David's attempt."
Six months after its introduction, the new Bing appears to have fallen short of its ambitious aims. Microsoft, the brains behind this endeavor, is baffled and scratching its digital head. Despite the AI-powered bells and whistles, Bing's global and U.S. search market share has been as consistent as a cardboard cutout.
Let's look at the numbers when the curtain goes up. Bing's search market share in the United States hit 6.47% in July. Doesn't it seem reasonable? Not quite. It was only 6.35% when this shiny new Bing arrived in February. To add to the irony, it temporarily peaked at 6.61% in March.
But wait, there's more! Rewind to 2022, a year of glory for Bing, where its U.S. market share was doing the cha-cha well above 7%, even tangoing up to 7.82% in November. Yet here we are, scratching our heads and wondering where the grand entrance went wrong.
Bing's global search market share was 2.99% in July. Compared to a more relaxed period in January, Bing was at 3.03%. On the other hand, Bing was strutting its stuff above 3% with the confidence of a rockstar in 2022.
Microsoft, on the other hand, isn't ready to give up just yet. They're marching to the beat of a different drummer, and the tune is titled "We've Got Internal Data." According to a WSJ report, Microsoft disputed the "outside data" by arguing that these third-party data wizards aren't gathering all visitors to Bing's conversation page.
StatCounter responded, "Hold on, we've got traffic to and from Bing's chat covered." Meanwhile, SimilarWeb said, "Yeah, we might miss a Bing Chat interaction or two with that fancy Edge sidebar thingy, but who's really counting?"
As a Microsoft official, Yusuf Mehdi asserted boldly, "We're making strides, bigger strides than a centipede in a marathon." We're delighted with our progress!" But wait a minute; Bing had a market share of 17.9% a decade ago, which is a far cry from today's endeavor.
The six-month anniversary of Microsoft is a fascinating spectacle. Their blog post claims over a billion conversations, three-quarters of a billion images, and some growth for Edge that they are excited about. The PR wagon came, but the "celebration" didn't go well with everyone, including Search Engine Land.
SimilarWeb and comScore joined the party in a digital showdown with more data. The verdict? Bing might've put on some weight, but it's not enough for a heavyweight title. Bing has a 2% traffic share in the United States as of July, according to SimilarWeb, although comScore claims a 6% reduction in visitors and total visits from February to July. In July, the year-on-year comparison showed a 2% decrease.
In this unfolding tale of digital titans, it appears that Bing's attempt to rouse itself from its search engine slumber is met with a slow clap from the unmatched Google. The fight for the search engine throne continues, but Google maintains its lead. Will Bing rise to the occasion or fade away? Only time will tell, and perhaps another AI-powered business.
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by Rubah Usman via Digital Information World
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