5 ms·

Can we get a [2009] in the title? It would be interesting to see some updated numbers on this, especially from SO. While I don't imagine many programmers are

Can we get a [2009] in the title? It would be interesting to see some updated numbers on this, especially from SO. While I don't imagine many programmers are using Bing, it would be interesting to see where DuckDuckGo ranks.

craigday 15y ago
What I find interesting is that Stack Overflow has a really strong contingent of .Net/C# developers, so I assume these developers have a pretty reasonable investment in Microsoft technology, and not even they use Bing!
- resnamen 15y ago
  Many Microsofties don't even use Bing.
lambda 15y ago
Even if Bing isn't all that popular with programmers, I'm pretty sure it would come in higher than Yahoo did in that list. As far as I know, Bing has actually had moderate success in getting some marketshare from Google, though nothing outstanding, and while programmers are not representative of wider demographics, you will probably see at least some of them using Bing.
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  My understanding of Bing's "success" is that much of it has been in contracted search -- setting up Bing as the default search service for specific sites and/or online services, or something like that. No, I don't know specifics, but it's similar to earlier games MSFT played with IIS numbers -- setting up IIS as the default "parking" domain for some large domain registrars.
jwesley 15y ago
If anything Google has gained some share since then. The biggest change has been that it continues to suck more and more traffic away with ads, YouTube listings, Google Places listings, shopping results, Google's in house affiliate ads, Google Books, and anything else that pays Google or keeps traffic on Google sites. It's gotten so bad that in many verticals it is impossible to find an organic result without scrolling. Like this for example: http://www.seobook.com/images/ads-ads-ads.gif http://www.seobook.com/images/ads-ads-ads.gif
- icebraining 15y ago
  I wonder why I don't get any ads above the "Related searches..." at all when I use the same query. I do use https://encrypted.google.com/ https://encrypted.google.com/ instead of plain google.com, maybe that affects the ads? In fact, I've just searched for a bunch of queries that I assume would have plenty of bidders (NFL, football, harry potter, ipad) and none of them had any ads box.
  - adgar 15y ago
    I hate to be that guy, but are you sure you don't have adblock on? I'm logged in, tried encrypted.google.com, and saw the expected ad results for all of those queries.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      It's OK, but I don't use Adblock. I do use NoScript, but all the domains for Google Search are whitelisted.
spolsky 15y ago
OK-doke, here's the last month of Stack Overflow search engine referral traffic. Google 69,081,674 visits Bing 520,543 visits Baidu 319,294 Search (CBS) 176,208 Yahoo 133,833 MSDN 109.875 Yandex 80.399 Naver 89,733 Ask 30,026 DuckDuckGo 25,492 AOL 6,409 Daum 4,462 Blekko 659
- jmdugan 15y ago
  Just keep in mind: People who end up at Stack Overflow are heavily biased compared to the general Internet population - because they are looking for something that lead them to search for and then click a link to Stack Overflow. This same bias that selects the population will affect the choice of which search engine to use.
  - spolsky 15y ago
    Nice theory, but the data doesn't support it. We have other sites (cooking.stackexchange, diy.stackexchange) that are much more representative of the population at large. Even on those sites, you see a similar ratio... the second largest search referrer sends 1.6% as much traffic as Google (about twice as much as it sends to StackOverflow, but still virtually insignificant.)
    - jmdugan 15y ago
      Perhaps the selection bias is some combination of "understands how the Internet works / not willing to accept paid results in searches / looking for real facts and data" that lead users to use both Google and Stack Exchange? Clearly Google has an obvious and overt lead in all categories, and all search. I'm not sure how you can refute that the set of visitors to one site is not a biased sample compared to all Internet users. Your results are different than other published search engine use comparisons. If both are factual, then the measurements must come from different populations.
      - jshen 15y ago
        "Your results are different than other published search engine use comparisons" Link please? The traffic for my site isn't as extreme as the stack exchange, but I'm seeing 9 times more traffic from google than bing. This leads to the same conclusion that Jeff came to. If Bing stopped sending me traffic tomorrow I wouldn't care. If google stopped sending me traffic I'd lose nearly all of my traffic.

craigday 15y ago

What I find interesting is that Stack Overflow has a really strong contingent of .Net/C# developers, so I assume these developers have a pretty reasonable investment in Microsoft technology, and not even they use Bing!

resnamen 15y ago
Many Microsofties don't even use Bing.

lambda 15y ago

Even if Bing isn't all that popular with programmers, I'm pretty sure it would come in higher than Yahoo did in that list. As far as I know, Bing has actually had moderate success in getting some marketshare from Google, though nothing outstanding, and while programmers are not representative of wider demographics, you will probably see at least some of them using Bing.

dredmorbius 15y ago
My understanding of Bing's "success" is that much of it has been in contracted search -- setting up Bing as the default search service for specific sites and/or online services, or something like that. No, I don't know specifics, but it's similar to earlier games MSFT played with IIS numbers -- setting up IIS as the default "parking" domain for some large domain registrars.

jwesley 15y ago

If anything Google has gained some share since then. The biggest change has been that it continues to suck more and more traffic away with ads, YouTube listings, Google Places listings, shopping results, Google's in house affiliate ads, Google Books, and anything else that pays Google or keeps traffic on Google sites. It's gotten so bad that in many verticals it is impossible to find an organic result without scrolling. Like this for example: http://www.seobook.com/images/ads-ads-ads.gif http://www.seobook.com/images/ads-ads-ads.gif

icebraining 15y ago
I wonder why I don't get any ads above the "Related searches..." at all when I use the same query. I do use https://encrypted.google.com/ https://encrypted.google.com/ instead of plain google.com, maybe that affects the ads? In fact, I've just searched for a bunch of queries that I assume would have plenty of bidders (NFL, football, harry potter, ipad) and none of them had any ads box.
- adgar 15y ago
  I hate to be that guy, but are you sure you don't have adblock on? I'm logged in, tried encrypted.google.com, and saw the expected ad results for all of those queries.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    It's OK, but I don't use Adblock. I do use NoScript, but all the domains for Google Search are whitelisted.

spolsky 15y ago

OK-doke, here's the last month of Stack Overflow search engine referral traffic. Google 69,081,674 visits Bing 520,543 visits Baidu 319,294 Search (CBS) 176,208 Yahoo 133,833 MSDN 109.875 Yandex 80.399 Naver 89,733 Ask 30,026 DuckDuckGo 25,492 AOL 6,409 Daum 4,462 Blekko 659

jmdugan 15y ago
Just keep in mind: People who end up at Stack Overflow are heavily biased compared to the general Internet population - because they are looking for something that lead them to search for and then click a link to Stack Overflow. This same bias that selects the population will affect the choice of which search engine to use.
- spolsky 15y ago
  Nice theory, but the data doesn't support it. We have other sites (cooking.stackexchange, diy.stackexchange) that are much more representative of the population at large. Even on those sites, you see a similar ratio... the second largest search referrer sends 1.6% as much traffic as Google (about twice as much as it sends to StackOverflow, but still virtually insignificant.)
  - jmdugan 15y ago
    Perhaps the selection bias is some combination of "understands how the Internet works / not willing to accept paid results in searches / looking for real facts and data" that lead users to use both Google and Stack Exchange? Clearly Google has an obvious and overt lead in all categories, and all search. I'm not sure how you can refute that the set of visitors to one site is not a biased sample compared to all Internet users. Your results are different than other published search engine use comparisons. If both are factual, then the measurements must come from different populations.
    - jshen 15y ago
      "Your results are different than other published search engine use comparisons" Link please? The traffic for my site isn't as extreme as the stack exchange, but I'm seeing 9 times more traffic from google than bing. This leads to the same conclusion that Jeff came to. If Bing stopped sending me traffic tomorrow I wouldn't care. If google stopped sending me traffic I'd lose nearly all of my traffic.