First Recognized As A Referrer, Now As Organic

One of our clients experienced an odd amount of traffic coming from a new source in their ‘referring sites’ category in Google Analytics: bing.com

On a closer look, we found that bing.com was showing up both in ‘referring sites’ and ’search engines’ categories. After drilling down we discovered that it was due to Google beginning to recognize it as a source of organic traffic around June 8th. Look at the following graphs, first referring sites, then organic.

… and now organic

As you can see, it dropped off and picked up around the same time on the different categories of traffic. A little late to the party? Or did the Google bouncer hold them outside for a little bit =) - you be the judge.

All in all, I’m not that impressed. Unless Bing adds some serious tools to their arsenal to help users find what they’re looking for in an entire new way, I think it will be a hard sell for people to break their habit of using Google. While users may not even be aware that they aren’t happy with the results they see in Google, its hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

Following is a breakdown of search engine traffic from June 10th-June13th, a more accurate depiction after Google began recognizing bing.com as a search engine.

As you can see, once setting the date variable after June 9th, the break down of Search Engine traffic shows Bing at 5.6 %, neck and neck with AOL search. Granted this client’s user base might be a bit learning towards AOL, but I think we can conclude - at least at this stage - Bing will stick around the same % as did Live. It will be interesting to see if this changes in the coming months, but if I had to bet on it, I wouldn’t be going bonkers for bing just yet.