Study: A Third of Google Users Kept Using Bing After a Two-Week Trial

How much of Google’s lead comes from being better, and how much from habit? A working paper from researchers at Stanford, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, tested this with real browsing data. Search Engine Journal summarized the study on May 1, 2025.

What changed

The researchers followed 2,354 desktop users with a browser extension that recorded actual searches, not survey answers. Some users changed nothing, some picked their preferred engine on a choice screen, and others were paid to use Bing for two days or for two weeks.

• About one third of the Google users paid to use Bing for two weeks kept using it after the payments stopped.
• Of those who stayed, 64% said Bing was better than they expected and 59% said they had simply gotten used to it.
• Trying Bing raised users’ quality ratings of it by about 0.6 standard deviations, closing roughly a third of the perceived gap with Google.
• A choice screen alone moved Bing’s share by only about one percentage point.

What it means for your website

The study suggests that defaults and habit, more than a large quality gap, keep people on Google. That matters for regulators, who have relied on choice screens, and it matters for marketers: search behavior can shift faster than market share numbers suggest once people actually try an alternative, including AI assistants.

What to do now

• Do not plan for Google only. Check that your site is indexed in Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing’s index also powers Microsoft Copilot.
• Keep your business details consistent across Google, Bing and Apple Maps.
• Watch referral traffic from Bing and AI tools in your analytics, so you see a shift early.