Bing has gone from being a nonstarter to a serious threat to Google within the span of a few years, but Microsoft’s search engine saw a bit of a setback in July as it reportedly saw search volume drop by 4%.
Hitwise says that July’s estimated 4% drop in searches came on the heels of a 5% gain in May, which is around the time Microsoft launched Bing’s ‘Sidebar’ feature, alongside a major social-focused update to the search engine. Even though Hitwise speculates that the update could be behind Bing’s loss, we’re not so sure, since it really wasn’t that significant of a change, in terms of Bing’s basic function.
Since numbers like this tend to vary and fluctuate fairly regularly, and since Hitwise is relying on estimates, only Microsoft can really tell if Bing usage has declined. And since Google also saw its search volumes drop by 1% at the same time, we might go so far as to suggest that people were just searching a little less in July.
Regardless, the future does look promising for Bing, thanks to Bing’s heavy integration with Windows 8 and Windows Phone. As Microsoft’s product line becomes even more tightly knit, Bing may well see a big boost.
Source: PRWeb via: Yahoo News
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