Microsoft will not be happy with the news that its market share for its Bing search engine has fallen.

The September numbers from Web metrics firm Net Applications show a slight drop in Bing's global market share. To be fair Google's whopping share of the pie dipped a bit too. It seems that Redmond has a bit of a problem in that it has created a credible search engine, punters like it, but they can't be bothered switching from Google.

People have been using Google for years now and generally the great unwashed are fairly conservative about changing something they know. The Google toolbar appears on their browser, it is even becoming a feature of their mobile phone. No-one says “Bing me”, or would admit that they “binged David Hasselhoff and discovered he liked slushy puppies”. Google is the world of search.

The biggest problem is that to the great unwashed, a search is a search. We don't expect it to do anything other than give us a list of addresses. We don't think, “I wonder what I will get if I try this in Bing, or Yahoo”. So Microsoft is stuck with having to get people interested in the site. Really it needs to do something about its Front End. OK it looks alright, but it does not say “Wow this will reach parts of the Internet that Google can't reach”. It could also come up with a “now” search so that it can find pages that have been updated recently rather than those which were written in hieroglyphic HTML on the inside of the Great Pyramid.

Perhaps however the best trick that Vole can come up with is bribery. Its cash back promotion for users who click a sponsored link on a Bing search results page and then make a purchase was the sort of idea which could drive users to the search engine. Judging by the people who create long queues in the supermarket check-out by spending hours searching through wads of discount coupons everyone is a sucker for a 10 percent off deal.