It’s still very early in the AI search engine arms race, but it appears Microsoft has made gains on Google thanks to the new Bing.

Microsoft has previously told us that one-third of preview users were new to Bing and that Bing passed 100 million daily active users following the new Bing preview.

Elsewhere, Similarweb data showed:

“…page visits on Bing have risen 15.8% since Microsoft Corp unveiled its artificial intelligence-powered version on Feb. 7, compared with a near 1% decline for the Alphabet Inc-owned search engine, data till March 20 showed.

– Reuters, OpenAI tech gives Microsoft’s Bing a boost in search battle with Google

Why we care. If Microsoft Bing is growing its search share, that means your site potentially could get more organic traffic from Bing. We’re starting to see evidence that traffic from Bing is up for some brands and publishers. As always, anything that makes us slightly less reliant on Google traffic is a notable development.

More from Similarweb. Over the last seven days:

• Bing.com traffic is up 15.4%
• Google.com traffic is down 2.4%

And over the last 28 days, bing.com was up 13.6% and google.com was down 2.8%. Similarweb also reported:

Although this recent performance may reflect the incorporation of ChatGPT-like functionality from Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, Bing has been making monthly incremental gains of as much as 10% year-over-year for the past couple of years – often at Google’s expense.

– Similarweb, Microsoft’s lead in incorporating ChatGPT-like features at least part of the story

Meanwhile, those traffic gains to Bing paled in comparison to traffic growth to ChatGPT (chat.openai.com), which was up 21.3% week over week.

Publisher traffic. Prior to Feb. 7 (the day the new Bing launched), Bing made up just 1.22% of Search Engine Land’s organic search traffic. Now Bing is up to a 2.6% share. Google still dominates – it has dropped from 98.2% prior to Feb. 7 to 96.7% now.

Bing traffic to Search Engine Roundtable is up 155%. Barry Schwartz shared that data earlier today on Twitter:

Meanwhile, Bing is becoming a significant referral source, even “beating Google on some pieces,” according to a tweet by Jez Corden, managing editor of tech publication Windows Central.

Social engagement data: Bing up, Google down. Comscore won’t have comprehensive traffic numbers available until the end of the month, but the company shared some social engagement data with Search Engine Land (Source: Comscore Social, Content Pulse, March 1-21, 2022 & 2023):

• Engagement on posts across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok that mentioned “Google” and “search” month-to-date are down 71% year-on-year (March 2022 to March 2023). 
• Posts across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok mentioning “Bing” and “search” are up 48% year on year.