I received a tip today that Bing referrals were outperforming Yahoo referrals on several major websites. If that keeps happening, it would make Bing the second largest referrer on the Web.
For example, my source said that on one site, Bing was sending about 20% of searches, while Yahoo was sending around 15%. On this blog, Bing is referring 9% of searches, while Yahoo is sending 7%. I looked at a couple of other sources, and found mention of the same thing.
This never happened when Microsoft released its Live search. What gives? Is Bing actually gaining market share, or are people just testing the search engine out? Either way, this bodes well for Bing, especially in its quest to gain market share from Yahoo.
The big question now is whether Microsoft will take a big chunk out of Yahoo’s paid search revenue, as mentioned here: http://domusinc.blogspot.com/2009/06/does-microsoft-bing-change-paid-search.html.
It could just be a matter of a heavily hyped launching equating to big-time use of a product. You can probably just take away whatever you want from it, but the true test will be in the coming weeks. I imagine that Yahoo would be a tad bit worried about this development, but i think it also proves that a certain group of people are anxious to check out new ways to search.