by - Microsoft unveiled an updated Bing search engine on Tuesday, powered by the technology behind ChatGPT.
- CEO Satya Nadella is chasing Google’s dominant lead in the search market.
- Check out the charts below to see how the new Bing has performed so far.
It’s been a big week for Bing. Relatively speaking.
On Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled an updated Bing search engine built on the technology behind ChatGPT. The OpenAI chatbot has taken the world by storm since its launch in late November, and Microsoft, OpenAI’s main sponsor, is riding on this wave of enthusiasm to challenge Google’s dominant lead in the search market.
Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft Executive tweeted that in 48 hours more than 1 million people joined a waiting list for the company’s Bing preview.
Apple’s Bing app on iOS moved from No. 142 on Feb. 7 to No. 4 overall on Feb. 9, according to data from Apptopia. Bing app downloads jumped to 102,952 on Feb. 9, significantly above the average of around 12,000 downloads per day the previous week. Google app downloads have remained steady between 300,000 and 320,000 a day over the same period, Apptopia data shows.
“The app launched in 2009 (I had no idea Bing had been around that long), but it just had its biggest download day ever,” wrote Adam Blacker, director of content and communications for Apptopia, in a report on Friday. “While we expect installs to increase as more people gain access to AI-powered search, the biggest day is still just 32% of Google Search installs.”
Daily active users of the Bing app jumped to 572,965 on Feb. 9, up from around 380,000 on previous days. This is still far behind Google. The Google app had around 22.8 million daily active users during the same week, according to data from Apptopia.
The Bing website drew 30.3 million visits on Feb. 7, the day Microsoft unveiled its AI-powered updates and invited users to try it out and join a waiting list. The following day, there were 31.7 million visits, according to Similarweb estimates. This represents an increase in traffic in the range of 27 million to 29 million daily visits in the previous days. Feb 8 traffic was about 15% higher than what Bing has seen on a typical day for the past 6 months.
In the end, this is all about gaining a bigger share of the highly lucrative search engine market. We checked Statcounter, which provides widely followed data on this industry, and the numbers are scary for Bing.
As of February 9, Google held 93.21% of the worldwide search engine market. Bing had 3.05%, according to Statcounter estimates.
“There are still no changes in search sharing,” Aodhan Cullen, CEO of Statcounter, told Insider.
Do you work at Microsoft? Have insights to share? Contact reporter Ashley Stewart using a non-functional device via the Signal encrypted messaging app (+1-425-344-8242) or email ([email protected]).
