Bing made Google dance and then stole some search traffic

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wanted to make Google dance two years ago, with an AI overhaul of Bing that was designed to steal Google’s all-important search market share. Now, there are plenty of signs that Microsoft has successfully taken search share off Google, both in the US and worldwide.

Earlier this week Microsoft reported that its search and news advertising revenue had grown by $1.6 billion, or 13 percent, over the last fiscal year. Excluding traffic acquisition costs, revenue had increased by 20 percent thanks to “higher search volume and higher revenue per search.”

That higher search volume has been persistent for more than a year now, and Jordi Ribas, head of search at Microsoft, revealed on X this week that it has also had an impact on overall desktop search market share. According to Comscore, Bing now has 29 percent of US search share, compared to around 60 percent for Google. That’s a 2.1 percentage point increase since the launch of Bing Chat in February 2023.

StatCounter says Bing has increased its worldwide search share to 11.6 percent, a 3.4 percentage point increase from two years ago. At the same time, both Comscore and StatCounter report that Google’s search share has declined. Google has lost 6.1 percentage points worldwide, and in the US it has lost 1.2 percentage points.

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