Internet search giant Google continues to dominate the Australian market, and while rival Bing has gained some ground overseas, Microsoft’s engine is nowhere to be seen in comparison, the latest Hitwise data reveals.
But while Hitwise suggests businesses should continue paying attention to Bing when developing SEO campaigns, one industry expert believes Google should be a company’s primary focus.
The figures show Google Australia accounted for 74.61% of Australian searches during February, with Google.com taking 12.65%, equating to an overall market share of 87.26%.
In comparison, Microsoft Bing only managed to take 4.05% of the market during February – representing a 4.8% decline from the previous month. Yahoo came in third with 4.45% of all searches in February, up 0.5% from January, while Yahoo Australia took just 2.63% of the market.
Experian Hitwise research director Alan Long said in a statement the results show that businesses need to be using a variety of search engines, including Bing, when attracting people to their sites.
“These results highlight Google’s continued market dominance that looks set to continue as no substantial challengers have emerged in the past year,” he said.
“To future proof their marketing efforts businesses need to closely monitor Bing and other competing sources to chart their impact on Google and its dominance of the search market. As the spread of search engines diversifies businesses must ensure they focus marketing efforts across the different sites in order to remain competitive.”
But Jim Stewart, chief executive of Stewart Media, says while Microsoft Bing may be continuing to gain market share in the US, in Australia it’s a different story and businesses must go where the customers are.
“If you find your audience is using Bing a lot, then sure, go ahead and use it, but to my mind the people that are using Bing are those who do not know how to change their home page and are very inexperienced users. If your customers are in that audience, go ahead and use it, but it’s a very niche market.”
“You look at Google, which is probably higher than 87% in Australia anyway, and they are accounting for the majority of search traffic across the whole network of sites that we manage.”
Stewart says while he encourages more competition in the market, and hopes Bing will eventually become a competitor, right now the market is dominated by Google, and will be for some time.
“Look at Google, which has gained nearly one billion customers without advertising pretty much at all, and then you look at Bing which has advertised the crap out of itself through Facebook and television and can’t get a leg up.”
“Besides, if you are concerned about ranking for Google then you are going to rank on Bing anyway, because the fundamentals are pretty much the same and you aren’t going to change much of your marketing between the two methods.”
The Hitwise data also revealed a number of current trends among internet users, with travel, food and beverage and aviation showing the largest increases in their share of upstream traffic coming from search engines at 7.5%, 1.62% and 5.2% respectively.
“This trend is significant as we begin to see greater consumer confidence re-emerge following the GFC. The strains around disposable income are beginning to slacken and as a result we are seeing a renewed interest in the travel and tourism sector,” Long said.
The data also revealed more detailed search queries, with those averaging five to more than eight words long increasing by 2.14%.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
