Is Bing Better Than Google?
Yesterday may have seen Google overtake Microsoft in terms of company value, but Microsoft claim that they have the better search engine. It comes after the company conducted their 'Bing It On Challange' to blind test the two search engines.
Microsoft announced that the Challenge has had over 5 million visitors. It offers users a blind search experience, ie without the branding of either Google or Bing, and asks users to say which search engine they prefer.
Bing hired a “research partner” to question a few thousand of those who took the challenge. The numbers are about what you would expect if you have used both Bing and Google in recent months, and often speak to those who have not.
Apparently 64% of respondents were surprised at how good Bing's search results were. A further 50% stated that their opinion of Bing had improved after seeing their results alongside Google, with another 33% of Google users saying they'd be using Bing more often after taking part in the tests.
More worryingly for Google however were the 1/6 of users that said the results showed growing cracks in the search results offered by Google.
Now, what can we make of all this data? It simply states what is true: Bing is a capable search engine that is constantly improving.
The vital statistic however is that during blind testing, users preferred Bing to Google by a ratio of 2 to 1.
Of course the results should come with the caveat that it's far from a random sample, and may well contain a decent chunk of Microsoft/Bing fans. Nevertheless, defeating Google by such a margin is no mean feat.
Despite the results however, Microsoft does not expect search usage patterns to change much in the short term, as the Google habit is very strong and difficult to change.
It does show however that Bing will continue to nip away at the search giants market share.
Are you a Bing user? If not, what would make you shift from Google?
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