Microsoft Bing has seen renewed interest with the integration of Prometheus, a derivative of ChatGPT tailored for online research. At the beginning of March, the search engine exceeded the 100 million user mark for the first time worldwide.
ChatGPT boosts Bing traffic
This boom in popularity has led to it a significant increase in traffic saved by Bing. According to data published by SimilarWeb, bing.com traffic increased by 15.4% in the last seven days, while google.com traffic fell by 2.4% over the same period. In the last 28 days, bing.com is up 13.6%. For its part, google.com was down 2.8%.
Bing’s traffic growth compared to Google in 2023, according to SimilarWeb.
Bing’s traffic growth compared to Google in 2023, according to SimilarWeb.According to SimilarWeb, the introduction of features related to artificial intelligence has onlyaccelerate an earlier trend. In fact, Bing has seen a gradual increase in traffic since 2021. Year after year, Microsoft’s search engine recorded “gradual monthly gains,” “often at Google’s expense.”
Bing’s increase in traffic compared to Google between 2021 and 2023, according to SimilarWeb.
For example, traffic on bing.com increased by 9%, while traffic on google.com fell by 3.1% in February 2023. A year earlier, Bing was content with monthly growth of 8.6%. Google had recorded a very slight decline of 0.3% at the time. Since the presentation of the new Bing in early February, Microsoft seems to have managed to win over some of the Internet users who have done their searches on Google.
In recent weeks, the Bing chatbot has caused a lot of ink. Generative artificial intelligence has particularly distinguished itself by uttering threats, insults or by multiplying “hallucinations”. Indeed, when a conversation gets too long, Prometheus tends to make things up and get angry. So, to frame the AI, Microsoft set limits and added a toggle to the Bing interface. This allows the creativity of the chatbot to be slowed down or unbridled as needed.
Clear lead of Google
Despite the increased traffic of its competitor, Google remains the undisputed leader in online search. The Mountain View giant saves 82 times more traffic on google.com than Microsoft on bing.com, SimilarWeb points out. According to StatCounter, Google has more than 94% of the search market share globally, compared to 2.8% for Bing.
The number of visits to Google and Bing in February 2023.
The number of visits to Google and Bing in February 2023.However, Google is aware of this the emerging threat from Bing and ChatGPT. In the rush, the company also unveiled its own generative artificial intelligence, Bard, to improve searches on Google’s engine. Currently limited to the US and UK, the chatbot has met with moderate enthusiasm, including among Google employees.
The SimilarWeb study also focuses on the traffic recorded by the OpenAI website that enables chatting with ChatGPT. In a sign of the colossal success of Generative AI, the site saw a 21.3% increase in traffic in a week…