Even though the new AI-powered Bing search experience is rolling out to a limited number of users, Microsoft says it is seeing record-setting growth and engagement that may indicate a big shift is coming to the search landscape.
Though Microsoft is still only receiving a single-digit percentage of overall search volume, these early numbers could be a sign that Google might finally have a real challenger as the new AI-powered Bing and Edge browsing experience become more widely available.
Additionally, Microsoft reports it is now seeing more than 100 million daily active users – with around a third of those users being entirely new to Bing.
Importantly, Microsoft says users are returning to Bing more often each day thanks to expanded uses of the Edge browser and improvements to Bing’s search result relevance.
Microsoft reported that around a third of the users with access to the AI-powered search experience are using the Chat feature every day for a wide variety of tasks including search, content creation, and more.
While the new AI-powered search experience is likely driving much of this increased engagement and usage, long-term data shows that use of the Edge browser has also been steadily growing over the past two years.
Additionally, Microsoft says the implementation of AI-assisted search has significantly improved the relevance of search results, saying: “The second factor driving trial and usage is that our core web search ranking has taken several significant jumps in relevancy due to the introduction of the Prometheus model so our Bing search quality is at an all-time high.”
As we are in the early days of Bing’s new AI-powered search and browser experience, it will be interesting to see whether this growth continues – especially once Google’s AI-powered tools begin to develop.
