If you tell people that you use Bing as your main search engine, many will laugh at you and say "Nobody uses Bing. Why do you do it?" While the public image of this search engine is not very positive, the truth is that this search engine has grown in use, in the USA and a few other markets. Also, recently Microsoft has bragged about Bing on Twitter and showed us that is bigger than we think. Would you like to guess Bing's global market share in search?
Bing's global market share is (wait for it) only 9%!
Microsoft has bragged on Twitter and then later on its Bing Ads website, with infographics saying that "Bing is bigger than you think."
First, Microsoft posted this image where it brags about the countries where it has a reasonably large market share. We learned that it has 33% market share in the USA, 23% or 25% (depending on where you look) in the UK, 26% in Taiwan, 20% in Hong Kong, 16% in Canada and 12% in Australia. The company also lists important European countries where its market share is way below 20%, in some even lower than 10%, like in Italy or the Denmark.
Yes, having a market share larger than 20% is an excellent result, in a world dominated by Google, but we see this in a tiny number of countries.
To complete the picture, Microsoft then posted another tweet with more detailed statistics, split by regions. The company has shared that it has a worldwide market share of only 9%. In the picture below you can see its numbers for the two American continents and Western Europe. It seems that in Latin America it performs poorly, with a market share of only 5% or less, depending on the country.
Next is the picture for Asia Pacific. In this region, Bing has a market share of only 4%. You can see the stats country by country below.
Where can I see more detailed numbers and the global search engine market share?
If you want to see more detailed numbers from Microsoft, check this PDF and the interactive data that Bing has made available on its Bing ads website. If you want some data on Google's global search engine market share and compare the numbers, you could try NetMarketShare.
The problem with Bing: It doesn't act and think like a global search engine!
If you look at the data presented by Microsoft, it is clear that Bing doesn't work and think like a global search engine. There are large regions of the world where it "doesn't exist" in a meaningful way, like in Eastern Europe and Africa. Even in Latin America, it only has 5% market share. There are even Western European countries like Portugal or Luxembourg, where there's no data about Bing's usage. Most probably because very few people use Bing there. Also, in Asia, there are large countries like Turkey or Pakistan where there's "no data" about Bing being used. Not even Japan or Philippines seem to use this search engine in a way that translates into meaningful market share.
We are big users of Microsoft products and services, and we tried Bing many times. While it fares well for search queries made in English, each time "we went local" and sought to search on it using our local language (Romanian), its local results are poor when compared to Google. The company is focused on the USA, a few big markets and that's it. Some Bing services do not work in many countries, and the rest of the world doesn't seem to exist for Bing and Microsoft. Unfortunately, the same problem also plagues Cortana.
If you are curious, just 5% of our readers use Bing to reach Digital Citizen. That's a lot less than the 9% global market share Microsoft advertises, and 42% of our readers are from the USA.
What is your experience with Bing?
Now that you know the data about Bing use in the global search market and our opinion about Microsoft's approach let us know your experience with Bing. Did you try this search engine? Does it work well for you? What do you think Microsoft should do to increase its market share?
