Alphabet is the IBD Stock Of The Day as the company's Google search engine is holding strong against Microsoft's new AI-powered Bing search engine. Also, Google stock cleared a buy point on Wednesday.
On the stock market today, Alphabet stock rose 1.5% to 121.75. Year to date, Google stock is up 38%.
In morning trades on Wednesday, Google stock broke a downtrend when it bounced off its 10-week moving average line, according to IBD MarketSmith charts. Shares also moved above their 21-day exponential moving average.
Based on IBD analysis, investors could have used Friday's high of 121.08 as a buy point.
Plus, Google stock could have a proper base in another week.
Google 'Holding Up Well' Against Bing
On Wednesday, BofA Securities analyst Justin Post reiterated his buy rating on Google stock with a price target of 128.
In a note to clients, Post said Google's search engine market share and traffic are "holding up well" in the face of increased competition from Bing. In February, Microsoft announced a revamped Bing search engine with artificial intelligence technology from its partner OpenAI. OpenAI is the company behind the viral chatbot ChatGPT.
Google's search engine market share was 92.7% in June, up 80 basis points from a year earlier. Bing's search share was 2.8%, down 40 basis points from a year ago, based on Statcounter data.
"Web traffic data suggest Google visits are steady while Bing/ChatGPT usage slows," Post said.
Meanwhile, Google could benefit from advertiser campaigns that use AI tools to improve their targeting of search ads, he said.
Google Stock Joins SwingTrader
On Wednesday, IBD added Google stock to its SwingTrader list. Google also is on the IBD Tech Leaders list.
Alphabet ranks seventh out of 77 stocks in IBD's Internet Content industry group, according to IBD Stock Checkup. The Internet Content group ranks a lofty seventh out of 197 industry groups that IBD tracks.
Google stock has an IBD Composite Rating of 91 out of 99. IBD's Composite Rating is a blend of key fundamental and technical metrics to help investors gauge a stock's strengths. The best growth stocks have a Composite Rating of 90 or better.
Follow Patrick Seitz on Twitter at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.
