In this article, we will look at the most relevant info about the world’s second most popular search engine, including audiences, market share, and revenue growth, so you can see how it can help your business grow.
Most Important Bing Statistics
- Almost a third of desktop searches in the US are done through Bing. (Statista)
- Bing currently takes up 2.66% of the global search engine market share. (StatCounter)
- As of September 2021, Bing holds 6.79% of the desktop search engine market. Google, on the other hand, has an 86.64% market share. (StatCounter)
- Bing holds 1.12% of the mobile search engine market in the US, trailing behind DuckDuckGo (2.24%), Yahoo! (1.98%). (StatCounter)
Who Uses Bing?
The number of worldwide visits to Bing.com peaked in June 2021 with 1.84 billion unique global visitors. This is up from 935.8 million visitors in February 2021—the lowest on record since the start of the year. (Statista)
When it comes to demographics, Bing appeals to older audiences— more than 70% of Bing users are over 35 years old. Broken down into age groups, 54% of users are over the age of 45, and 46% are under 45. Under 35s, on the other hand, make up only 29% of Bing users.
Microsoft Bing users are also higher-earners. The latest statistics reveal that almost a third have household incomes of over $100,000, while a mere 8% make less than $25,000 a year.
Gender-wise, there is an even split between men and women. Most Bing users (43%) are also married, whereas almost a third are single.
85% of Bing users are in the US, with 21% living in the South Atlantic region.
These stats clearly show that advertisers catering to an older demographic with money to spend should definitely take a closer look at Bing. Targeting those with higher education also makes sense as 33% of Bing’s user base has a Bachelor’s degree, while 17% have finished graduate school. (Aori)
Even though 31.31% of traffic to bing.com comes from the US, Bing sees traffic from other countries as well. In fact, 23.77% comes from China, whereas a smaller share of under 5% originates from Germany, Japan, and the UK. (SimilarWeb)
Bing also accounts for:
- 17% of search traffic in Canada
- 24% of search traffic in Taiwan
- 26% of search traffic in the UK
- 19% of search traffic in France
- 17% of search traffic in Norway
- 12% of search traffic in Australia (Statista)
Interestingly, “google” is the top searched term on Bing across the world. It is followed by “youtube,” “facebook,” “gmail,” and “amazon.” This implies that most of the people who use Bing are not that technologically savvy and probably older, using Bing as a default search engine without even realizing it. (The Verge)
Bing Searches
Bing sees almost 900 million searches a day. Google, the industry leader, gets around 6.9 billion searches per day. (BrightEdge)
Where do these searches come from?
Today there are 1.5 billion devices powered by Windows, and all of them direct a lot of traffic to the company’s search engine. In fact, 48% of Bing searches are from Windows 10 alone.
Bing is also integrated with other Microsoft devices, so many have been using Bing without even knowing it.
Let’s take a closer look:
- Bing is the default search engine for Microsoft’s Edge (which takes up 8% of the US desktop browser market)
- 1.2 billion Office users may also be using Bing without realizing it, as well as users of Microsoft apps like Skype and Teams, all of which are integrated with Bing for search results.
- There are 65 million active gamers who use Bing for search on their Xbox console.
- Voice search from both Cortana and Alexa is powered by Bing, the latter putting Bing in more than 100 million households.
On top of that, dozens of smaller search engines, like Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, partner with Microsoft to power their results and ads. (WordStream)
Nature Of Bing Searches
Users seem to rely on Bing for purchases that require more research and a longer deciding process. So, 40% of all paid search clicks in the automotive industry take place on Bing, as do 39% of paid search clicks in the retail estate sector and 37% in the travel industry. (WordStream)
Bing reaches over a third of all online retail searches thanks to Microsoft’s partnership with leading ecommerce platforms like Amazon, OfferUp, and GumTree. Advertisers should also be aware that Bing shopping campaigns note a 45% higher ad click-through rate (CTR) than on Google. The average cost per click (CPC) on shopping ads and the average cost to acquire a customer is also lower on Bing (30% and 40%, respectively). (WordStream)
Bing Advertising
Microsoft recently announced that 500,000 advertisers serve ads on Bing through the re-branded Microsoft Advertising, which is reflected in the fact that Bing has 100 consecutive months of market share growth between 2009 and 2019, earning up to $7 billion in revenue. Not all of this is down to Bing, though, as Microsoft owns various search ventures, but it is an impressive number nonetheless.
The lower number of advertisers on Bing equals less competition and more perks for Microsoft Advertising users. According to WordStream, Bing not only has a nearly 50% higher ad click-through rate than Google, the average cost per click and the average cost to acquire a customer is around 30% lower on Bing than on Google.
Managing Bing through Microsoft advertising is not complicated either. Advertisers can import their Google Ads campaigns to Microsoft Advertising, even customizing which changes to campaigns should be imported.
Bottom Line
Holding 92.04% of the global search engine market, Google is not leaving its position as an industry leader any time soon. However, the power of Bing can’t be underestimated either.
One of the biggest advantages of Bing is definitely its integration with other Microsoft devices. Bing also lets advertisers bid on search teams that are harder to capture on Google, and there is less competition.
Finally, if you are aiming at an older, educated, and well-off audience that may not be that tech-savvy and looking to make big purchases, Bing is definitely an option to consider on its own or in combination with Google.