Bing Drives Microsoft's Paid Clicks Up 8% In First Week

The number of times people clicked on ads listed next to Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) search results jumped about 8% in the week since the software giant released its newly revamped search engine, dubbed Bing, the world's largest search engine marketing firm said Thursday.

"If this share lift holds we can expect advertisers to allocate additional budget to Microsoft over the coming months," said Efficient Frontier Inc., which helps advertisers place text ads on top search engines.

Efficient Frontier, in a blog post on its Web site, also said the number of searches conducted on Microsoft was up about 20% from the week prior to Bing's launch, either due to new users trying Bing or existing Microsoft search users increasing their volume of queries. Efficient Frontier didn't provide market share data.

Efficient Frontier's blog post provided the latest sign that Microsoft's new search engine has captured the attention of Internet users and advertisers - at least temporarily.

Market research group comScore Inc. (SCOR) said earlier this week that Bing was off to a good start, helping boost the software giant's U.S. search market share to 11.1% from 9.1%. Bing's gains came primarily at the expense of Google Inc. (GOOG) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO).

Bing is a key element in Microsoft's effort to drive new revenue growth by winning a greater share of the Internet advertising market. The Redmond, Wash.-based software group has long been stuck with less than 10% of the U.S. Internet search market, while Google has about a 64% share and an even greater slice of the paid search market.

Efficient Frontier said it wasn't clear whether Microsoft's gain in paid clicks came at the expense of one or more of its rivals, or whether users simply clicked on a greater number of ads while they tried out Bing. The search engine marketing firm also said it wasn't clear whether the increase in Microsoft's paid clicks was sustainable.

Efficient Frontier said Bing's new "decision engine" features, such as query-specific drill-down categories available on the top left of the results page, may be allowing consumers to more easily find more relevant results.

-By Scott Morrison, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-765-6118; [e-mail]