Mar
14
Google and Bing Both Gain Share At Yahoo’s Expense
Wed Mar, 2012 by Derek Mehraban
The data for February’s search market share has been released by comScore. Both Google and Bing have gained share. Combined, they both gained .4% of the market. Both gains come at the expense of Yahoo, which lost the .4%. AOL remains unchanged at 1.6% and in a strange case of numbers not adding up (probably a rounding error) Ask Networks gained .1% of the market.
Part of the interesting result is that Google’s gain outpaced Bing’s gain even though Bing has been flooding the internet with marketing campaigns and a host of new updates. Maybe it will just take time for these updates to catch on, or maybe they are on the losing end of a slugfest. AOL’s ability to hang on shows that even the losing end of a slugfest might still be a profitable one.
These numbers can serve as a useful guide for social media agencies. Since only Yahoo is losing share, that is the only partner that might represent a bad ROI. Prices for advertising on yahoo might not reflect the losing share and digital agencies need to be careful about further loss of share before entering into new agreements. It is also important to note that Yahoo now contracts its searches out to Bing, so it is the Bing engine that reveals ads within search results. There are ways Yahoo can stem the bleeding, particularly if it is clear with digital agencies that it acknowledges the decreasing shares and that trend is reflected in prices. It’s not a reason to not deal with yahoo, but rather to employ caution.
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