Although Microsoft’s Bing “decision engine” has hit many bumps in the road in growing its market share, there’s one thing it’s done extremely well: it’s pulled in some of the most valuable segments of the online traffic.  A new study by online ad network Chitika shows that an individual Bing user is worth one and a half individual Google users in value to website owners.

The value of an individual user, in this case, is determined by their likelihood to click on a website’s revenue-generating call-to-action – in Chitika’s case, a text ad embedded in the site.  Across the sample of nearly 15 million impressions used for this study, Google users clicked on ads at a rate of 1.09%, while Bing users clicked on ads 1.67% of the time.

“Microsoft absolutely did the right thing by targeting people who buy online,” says Alden DoRosario, Chitika’s co-founder and CTO.  “Bing’s Cashback service did its job, and ensured that people who were using search with a clear intent to buy came to Bing.”

Across the Chitika network, the amount of Web traffic driven by Bing has been increasing steadily throughout 2010 – from 4.4% of traffic generated in April to 6.6% thus far in July – and that growth, combined with the higher per-user value, means that Bing should no longer be an afterthought for SEO gurus and webmasters.

Contact:

Daniel Ruby
Research Director, Online Insights
Chitika, Inc.
+866.441.7203 x966
press@chitika.com