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Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific

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Wolfram Alpha and Bing initial Asia Pacific stats

June 11, 2009

Over recent weeks two new entrants have appeared on the search landscape globally. The uniquely named Wolframaplha (www.wolframalpha.com) and Microsoft’s new entry Bing (www.bing.com).

WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com) made its public debut on 15 May, 2009 and Bing (www.bing.com) launched last week to much fanfare on 28 May. With a full week of data now available for Bing and 3 weeks of data for WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com) it’s timely to look at the initial impact of these two important launches.

The chart below highlights the period since the WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com) launch. Australian Internet users were the slowest to respond to the launch of the ‘computational knowledge engine’, but also represented the largest peak in visits amongst Asia Pacific markets on 19 May 2009, with 0.313% share of Australian visits to the Hitwise Search Engine category. New Zealand Internet users investigated WolframAlpha earlier on but did not reach the high peak in visits of Australian users, New Zealand visits to WolframAlpha accounted for 0.1622% of visits to the Search Engines category on 17 May 2009.

Singapore and Hong Kong peaked in tandem on 18 May with 0.1375% and 0.1326% share respectively of all Internet visits to Search Engines. In all Asia Pacific markets the initial interest in WolframAlpha declined and in now represents visits lower that 0.05% share.

Click on image to view larger chart.

At the peak of interest Wolfram Alpha (www.wolframalpha.com) ranked in the top 1,000 of all sites in each market;

• 163 in Australia (No.12 Search Engine),
• 360 (No. 25 Search Engine) in New Zealand,
• 624 (No. 31 Search Engine) in Singapore
• 833 (No.38 Search Engine) in Hong Kong

After Internet users initial curiosity satiated the rankings have slid in each market, most substantially in Hong Kong where on 7 June is ranked at 15,878 amongst all sites and 147 among Search Engines.

WolframAlpha by its very nature it will be a niche player, providing strong value to sectors of the online audience, particularly educational, technical and research- oriented industries.

Bing is Live

Bing (www.bing.com) is a different Search Engine all together. Launched on 28 May 2009 the replacement for Microsoft’s Live.com search engine has had an immediate impact. Positive media coverage and the seemingly endless desire for a strong search competitor to Google’s dominant position provided a strong base for the launch.

Click on image to view larger chart.

Australia has reacted most positively of the Asia Pacific nations to the launch of Bing, peaking on 3 June 2009 with 5.13% share of all visits to the Search Engine category The combined total of Microsoft search properties accounted for 5.4% share of visits in the Search Engine category on 3 June 2009, representing a 23.4% increase on the same day in 2008.

Google properties dominated the Australian search landscape with 88.38% of visits during week ending 6 June 2009. The launch of Bing did not hurt Google’s share substantially with the monolith’s share decreasing 0.12% and Yahoo!7 Search declining 0.99% from the week prior to launch, week ending 23 May 2009.
New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong’s curiosity peaked on 2 June, a full week after launch, and saw the combined share of Live.com and Bing.com deliver increased share of the Search Engine category. Hong Kong increased 26%, Singapore 40% and New Zealand 29% when compared with the same day a year earlier (2 June 2008).
As of 6 June 2009 Bing is the fourth ranked search engine in Australia, after replacing Google Image Search for four days (2 June - 4 June, 2009) at number three, replacing Live.com in the rankings.

In New Zealand Bing has taken over the fourth ranking position, formerly held by the very Search Engine it replaced, Live.com. A similar story is found in Hong Kong and Singapore where Bing is now the eight and fifth ranked search engine respectively replacing Live.com in the same positions.

The launch of Bing has created a greater opportunity for Microsoft to grow their share and develop a more substantial competitor to the dominant Google;, only time will tell whether the strategy and development of Bing will be a success.

Posted by Alan Long at 04:55 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Search | Search Engines