Arr, be Bing AI lendin' a hand in th' battle 'gainst Google? Nay, it seems Microsoft be refusin' t' admit it!
2023-08-21
Arr, me hearties! Methinks these fancy numbers be sayin' that Bing AI be failin' to hoist the sails o' search traffic for Microsoft. Aye, it be a sad day for them landlubbers!
New statistics from analytics firm Statcounter reveal that Microsoft's Bing AI has not been successful in driving traffic to its search site. In fact, Bing.com has seen a decline in its market share for global search engine traffic. Compared to January 2023, when Bing.com held a 3.03% share of the search market, it has now dropped slightly to 2.99% as of July this year. However, it is worth noting that this figure does represent a small gain compared to April, when Bing.com had a 2.76% share. Another analytics firm, Similarweb, reports that Bing.com's search share remains at 3.23%, the same as the beginning of 2023.The overall picture suggests that Bing.com has remained relatively stagnant in terms of user searches, despite the launch and subsequent full rollout of Bing AI in February and May respectively. Microsoft had hoped that Bing AI would help it to gain ground on Google, but these statistics paint a different story. Microsoft, however, disputes these figures, claiming that they fail to account for users who go directly to the Bing chatbot's page. Analytics firms argue that their figures do consider direct traffic to Bing Chat.
While the full story remains unclear, the fact that three separate sources of third-party data appear to roughly match with each other is telling. Microsoft is playing a long game, hoping that Edge, Bing.com, and Bing AI will all reinforce each other and ultimately build browser and search share, challenging Chrome and Google. At this early stage, however, it seems that not much progress has been made. Microsoft continues to develop features for its chatbot, and over time, Bing AI could contribute to search and browser adoption. But for now, the impact seems minimal.