Is Google Beginning to Lose Its Grip?

propertyportalwatch.com welcomes a guest opinion post from Nick Alexandrou of estateagents123.com on Microsoft’s new search engine bing.com. While Google has been busy introducing real estate search for Google Maps, Microsoft’s new search engine is growing in popularity. What does it mean for the property industry – portals and agents?

Microsoft’s newly revamped search engine bing.com (formerly live.com) could give Google a run for it’s money if the current trend continues. The popularity of bing.com has been rising steadily but is this just for now or will it continue into the future?

According to alexa.com bing.com is the top 16th website in the UK and top 15th globally.

I really like the look and feel of the site, especially the imagery used for the backgrounds, I have found myself using it more and more recently as it is part of Hotmail which I log into regularly.

So how will this affect the property industry?

Well, I would say that utilising any available marketing opportunity is a must whether it be the top, second, third or even fourth most popular search engine – you should aim to be on as many as possible. That way you cover all your bases and hopefully do not miss out on any potential business.

In the last few weeks we have seen a large surge in traffic coming from bing.com. We have always ranked well for key search terms such as ‘estate agents’ , ‘estate agents directory’ etc on Google and likewise on Bing/MSN Live. What this shows us is that more and more users are choosing to give Bing a go, maybe the new logo has caught their eye or they are bored of using the same old same old and simply want to try something new and fresh.

What do you think of bing.com? Do you agree with Nick? What impact do you see it having on the property industry? Share your thoughts by commenting below.

by Nick Alexandrou
estateagents123.com

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