Rand: Howdy SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I'm joined by my friend from Bing, Duane Forester. Duane, thank you for coming.
Duane: Always a pleasure and thanks guys for your time. We'll try to use it wisely.
Rand: We'll see about that. I've been known to spin all sorts of things. So, Duane, thrilled to have you back.
Duane: Thank you.
Rand: Thrilled to be talking about Bing. Some exciting news coming out of Bing. The first thing we're coving on our list, Bing now bigger than Italy?
Duane: Yes, bigger than Italy. Bigger than Italy.
Rand: Describe this for me. Bing, obviously, has way, way more users than 59 million, but you're talking about the pure ecosystem of Bing being of this particular size.
Duane: Yeah. So, the actual ecosystem within Bing, the Yahoo and Bing ecosystem, essentially, we serve about 59 million people, 57 million, somewhere in that range of people. Now, what's important about these people is not that they comprise a group that is larger than Italy. That's kind of nice. Right? And it looks really good. But the reality is that these almost 60 million people only interact with the Bing ecosystem. They do not interact with any other search ecosystem.
Rand: Interesting. So this is more of the exclusive. These are the Bing exclusive people.
Duane: Exactly. Now, I'll through a couple more stats out there for you. 4% higher spend rate than other search engines. 23% more likely to make an online purchase.
Rand: Okay. We've seen those stats previously.
Duane: Exactly. So when you actually look at the value of those users, those 59 million people of that ecosystem, that has a net positive effect for a lot of businesses. So it really is something folks need to pay attention to. I mean, the search engine, we're 30% plus market share now.
Rand: Yeah.
Duane: I mean, I still meet people every day that are like, "Oh, well, really? I didn't know." I'm like, "You're doing your business a disservice. You have to pay attention."
Rand: So what we should say to SEOs is, go tell all your competitors not to use Bing, so that you can use it and take advantage of the great customer base that they've got.
Duane: And the higher conversion rates. Who doesn't want more money? I mean really? Who's got your back? Bing's got yo