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Bing Bigger Than CNN, as Popular as MySpace? Not Likely.

by Terrence O'Brien on July 10, 2009 at 09:10 AM

Microsoft's new search engine Bing (the "decision engine") debuted to generally positive reviews -- the venerable David Pogue at the New York Times even claims that Bing out-googles Google in some ways. Similarly, Bing seems to be excelling on the traffic front; new numbers suggest the search site is outperforming some of the Web's most popular sites.

According to traffic-tracking firm Compete's June numbers, Bing attracted just shy of 50 million unique visitors in June, catapulting the fledgling search site to the 13th most trafficked Web site on the Internet. Bing leaped ahead of sites such as Twitter, Digg, and CNN. Although the site's traffic was only a third of search powerhouse Google, these numbers (if accurate) would indicate a huge win for Microsoft, a laggard in the search space.

The numbers, reported by Mashable, sounded a tad strange to us, as did the claim that Bing was now "bigger than Digg, Twitter and CNN." First, how did so many people -- enough to rival the traffic generated by MySpace -- become Bing devotees almost overnight? This sudden growth, while not misleading, may not tell the full story.

While we're sure Bing saw tons of new users because of its newness and Microsoft's advertising campaigns, realize that visits to Live.com, Microsoft.com, and searches on MSN.com automatically redirect users to Bing.com, which converts users of older Microsoft sites to the new search engine.

Things get a bit murkier if you start looking at the actual numbers. As social media and marketing blog Deep Jive Interests was quick to point out, the number of unique visitors to Bing were significantly lower than the number attracted by its predecessor, Live.com, during the month of June. Since June 3rd, Live.com has immediately redirected all of its traffic to Bing. We spoke to Lauren Moores, VP of Data and Research at Compete, and she said these redirects would be counted as unique visitors to both Live.com and Bing.com. This leaves us wondering why the numbers weren't much closer.

Moores conceded that some of the specific numbers might be slightly off, but said the general trending was accurate. She said that Compete's data about general trends in Web traffic were backed up by its closest competitors, such as Nielsen Online, and that it was clear that Bing was seeing a huge surge in visitors.

Some of Compete's numbers are at odds with its competitors, but how the different companies collect data and estimate traffic varies. Interestingly, Compete only provides data for U.S. surfers. However, there are still some strange discrepancies: While we'd love to believe that Switched.com is more popular than Wikipedia (even if just in the U.S.), we have trouble buying it, and Nielsen would likely back us up. Update: It was just pointed out to us that there is a ".com" after Wikipedia, instead of ".org." Here are the adjusted and much more accurate numbers.

What is clear is that it's still too early to declare Bing an unbridled success. It will take months to weed out the Bing tourists and for everyone to discover the new search engine. Until Bing starts generating a consistent level of unique viewers, we wouldn't put much faith in anyone's declaration that it's "bigger" than any other site. And, judging from the gaps between different Web-tracking firms' numbers, we'd take these rankings with a grain of salt even once the dust settles.

Tags: bing, compete, microsoft, top, web analytics, web tracking, WebAnalytics, WebTracking

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