Bing boosts market share but Google still leads

According to a report released this month by Experian Hitwise, a part of Experian Marketing Services, Bing-powered searches reach 30 percent of the market share in the United States, while Google still leads with 64 percent.

"Yahoo! Search and Bing achieved the highest success rates in March 2011. This means that, for both search engines, more than 80 percent of searches executed resulted in a visit to a Website. Google achieved a success rate of 66 percent," said the Hitwise report.

The statistics show that Google's percentage of U.S. searches month-over-month decreased 3 percent, whereas Bing-powered searches increased 5 percent and Bing.com searches increased 6 percent.

As for Microsoft's search engine Bing, the University of Maryland's Department of Computer Science suggests the slideshows on its site could increase the number of "hits." Just like any other search engine, Bing attempts to have a large database of pages that provide the desired results.

Although Bing's searches have increased while Google's have decreased, students still use Google as their primary search engine. 

"Google is classic. It's always the way to go," said Maggie Moore, a sophomore majoring in hearing and speech sciences. "Doesn't Bing stand for ‘because it's not Google?' I've never used it." 

Google is known to provide the best and fastest results for college students, as well as professionals. 

"I've been using Google ever since I can remember. It is the most efficient and quick search engine in my opinion," said sophomore English education major Kathryn Rutherford, who actually had to "google" what Bing was. "They have so many options, and they also started adding different types of search options such as scholarly, or news related, which is extremely useful when you're writing a research paper for school or need sources that are credible." 

Technically speaking, junior Heather Klinar, who majors in computer science, says when websites are written in HyperText Markup Language (HTML), tags can be embedded into the websites' codes to enable tracking of their market share. Klinar thinks, however, that Google does a better job at reaching their market share and tracking it. 

"Google even reaches a certain market by how they design the Google logo on a regular basis," said Rutherford. "I honestly enjoy how they change the image depending on special events like for Charlie Chaplin's birthday. Google is creative and useful at the same time."

Overall, the Terps are not as familiar with Bing as they are with Google. As students, they like the simplicity of its site and its multiple options. 

"It's hard to compete with a company search engine like Google that is as vast as what it is," said Klinar. "Do you ‘bing' things or ‘google' them? Think about it."