Users Of Online Search Becoming More Sophisticated


Most of the buzz in the online search space has been about Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine.

The improvements in Bing, or so the common wisdom goes, will help Microsoft better compete with market leader Google.

But the praise being heaped on Bing may be diverting attention from an even more important industry development: that search users are becoming rapidly more sophisticated, and engines of all types are having a difficult time keeping up.

So far the Bing magic hasn’t played out in the market. According to comScore, Bing did give Microsoft a modest boost in the June rankings. Its market share grew 0.4 points to 8.4 percent. But the gain came entirely from Yahoo, not Google.

Google held its own, with its share unchanged at 65 percent. Yahoo slumped 0.5 points to a 19.6 percent share.

That may have something to do with growing consumer expectations. On a conference call Thursday evening, Google Senior Vice President Jonathan Rosenberg said the company has noticed power users are running more complex searches with longer queries and higher expectations.

He said Google has tried to respond with its new options feature. But much more needs to be done in the realm of adding personalization and intelligence to search responses.

“Search is still an unsolved problem,” says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. So running hard with new products is a little like standing in place. The target keeps moving.