UK Bing use falls after initial few days

Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, saw a brief spurt of popularity in the UK before its usage levels fell, according to the web monitoring service Hitwise.

Hitwise research director Robin Goad wrote in a blog post on Monday that, "since the initial launch hype, traffic to the site has declined". The firm's analysis covered the first week of Bing's existence.

At its peak, on 3 June, Bing was getting 10.8 percent of UK search traffic. A day later, however, that share fell dramatically, and on 6 June it was 3.15 percent.

"However, one positive sign is that average visit time has increased to eight and a half minutes," Goad wrote. "This is half of Google UK's number but only slightly below Yahoo! UK Search, implying that the people are actually spending time on the site and using it rather than just visiting out of curiosity."

Goad also noted that Bing "relied on other Microsoft properties for most of its traffic", with 45.8 percent coming from MSN UK and 16.6 percent coming from Windows Live Mail.