Google Vs. Bing | Search Engine Wars Part 1

Google Vs. Bing: Search Engine Wars – Part 1

Posted by SeoLair On April - 2 - 2010

Google Vs. Bing

With the seemingly global approval of the Bing/Yahoo search deal comes the start of a long lasting battle. The search engine wars between Google and Bing have truly begun. Now of course the search engine war has been going on since the idea of anyone making money online, but this recent deal has escalated things to a new level. Once the implementation of the Bing/Yahoo search deal occurs sometime in Q4 (ppc interface integration is scheduled to take place in middle October), the search engine wars will really heat up. Google has a majority of the market by far with Bing sitting somewhere between 7-10% depending on whose numbers you look at. In Q4 of this year Bing will most likely represent about 26-28% market share, significantly more than they currently have. At the same time, Google is not only trying to hold steady but grow their market lead. Some people are under the impression that Google is willing to bleed market share to Bing or that Google isn’t afraid of Bing. To those I tell you – Google’s stock price is currently trading at $566/share. Google is paying very close attention to every move that Bing is making and counter-acting accordingly. The purpose of the Google Vs. Bing Search Engine Wars series is to document various strategic moves each search engine is making in order to capture your searches. One thing everyone undoubtedly loves about Bing is the amazingly beautiful imagery on the home page. Google is obviously paying attention to what people like about Bing and will attempt to re-create such features. Today I noticed the following section on the Google homepage:

Google Bing Wars

As you can see, “New! travel the world from your Google homepage” now appears. Hrm… I wonder where Google got that idea. Looking deeper into the new addition to iGoogle, you will notice the beautiful imagery that you can now add as a theme to your iGoogle. Now I now some of you are wondering, what’s new? I’ve always been able to add different themes to my iGoogle. The key here is the promotion of this feature on the home page and that it is entirely focused on travel and destinations, a strategy that has been working wonders for Bing.

Google Bing Wars Travel Destinations

This is just a teaser of strategic moves that Google and Bing will use against each other in the modern search engine wars. There are many more interesting moves that will be investigated. One that comes to mind instantly is the fact that Bing paid search click through rates are double, yes 2X, the other search engines including Google. Right now it is not imperative for Google to react. They get so much volume in comparison to Bing that paid search media will continue to look to Google as the leader. Will Google change the layout of their page to increase the CTR of their paid search ads in the future as Bing’s traffic grows? You’ll only know by checking back for upcoming parts of the ongoing series: Google Vs. Bing Search Engine Wars.

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