Are Google’s Days at the Top Numbered?

While many things have changed in the SEO world in recent years, one thing that hasn’t is the predominant position of Google in the search engine world. It’s maintained its hold on roughly two-thirds of the search engine market share, while Bing continues to make incremental progress but lags far behind.  Because of this, it’s natural that Google is the primary focus of almost all SEO activities.

But will this always be the case? It’s easy to forget that it was fairly recently that Google was the upstart in the search engine field, going up against established rivals such as AOL and Lycos. With Google recently choosing to keep its keyword data private to the public but share it with advertisers, some experts are wondering if Google is primed to lose some of its market share to Bing.

One thing is clear: Google and Bing approach search in different ways. Google is clearly focused on attempting to decipher what users really want to find and predicting this before a search is made. Bing takes the opposite approach and uses data from its deep ties with social media sites to determine what is most important to web users.

Mobile searches continue to gain in popularity as more people are using their smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices as primary means of surfing the Internet. Microsoft has already invested heavily in mobile; in addition, their connections with social sites such as Facebook mesh with the habits of users to use their mobile devices to check their social media profiles.

Google has been taking big chances recently by beginning to completely rethink how it handles search results. This includes implementing its Knowledge Graph in 2012. While Google hopes that this will eventually revolutionize the way that people search for information online, it also might provide competitors like Bing with a chance to capitalize and gain additional market share. Google is going to be the main search engine for the foreseeable future, but other search engines like Bing are likely to continue to gain market share in the months and years to come.