Less competition, faster average growth among reasons why Bing holds its ground
More than two-thirds of people in the United States will use Google as their search engines. Google has even become a verb rather than a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Nobody ever “Bings” anything.
Or do they?
That other one-third — that belongs mostly to Yahoo Bing according to Comscore. That’s right; businesses could be losing out on almost a third of their market without any type of Yahoo Bing search campaign.
Possible reasons behind Yahoo Bing’s growth
Search Engine Watch performed a study throughout 2014 and paid close attention to the fight between Yahoo Bing (or Bing) paid search and Google AdWords. The past results of Google’s much higher average Click-Through Rate (CTR) than Bing held true, but the gap shrank in 2014. Google’s average CTR in 2014 was 5.47 percent compared to Bing’s 2.42 percent — a far cry from the Google’s 265 percent stomping over Bing in 2012.
Between 2012 and ’14, Bing’s average CTR improved 175 percent compared to Google’s 65 percent during the same span. This is one of the attributions to Bing’s expanding place in the search advertising realm.
According to a Driving Sales article and Search Engine Watch’s study, between 16 and 18 percent of automotive, travel and shopping advertisers saw higher CTRs on Bing than Yahoo. If you have a business in the automotive realm, travel sector or ecommerce, perhaps it’s time to examine your search ad strategy.
Advantages of Bing Ads over Google AdWords
A company’s ad found a higher placement on Bing’s results pages (SERP) than Google, but this could be in part to more people advertising on Google AdWords than Bing Ads search. Overall, Google does provide a higher CTR than Bing Ads, and there doesn’t appear to be any trend that Bing could overtake Google in the search engine world.
There are some apparent advantages of choosing to use or even add Bing Ads to your search strategy. First, there is less competition on Bing than Google leading to the aforementioned higher listings on SERPs.
Also, with less competition also come cheaper pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. A newer company with a lower budget starting out may opt for Bing at first. The numbers certainly show that Bing isn’t just going to lie down and die.
If you feel like it’s time to re-examine your digital strategy, contact Farfetched Studios LLC. We are a St. Louis-based marketing agency that has experience and certification with both Bing Ads and Google AdWords to meet your business’s needs.