Bing vs. Google: What’s Your Bias?
Many people have biases when it comes to Google and Microsoft. For example, some passionately hate anything Microsoft touches, some fiercely defend Google as a white knight, and some can hardly wait for someone (anyone) to topple Google. And while these biases add entertainment value to the search engine war, they’re troublesome when you’re trying to objectively gauge Bing’s performance.
After trying Bing myself, I couldn’t find a reason to use it over Google. Then again, I’ll admit I’ve grown cynical and after seeing Microsoft serially “reinvent” its struggling search engine. Was I being unfair? Or is Bing the newest shade of lipstick on the same pig? Wouldn’t it be great if someone ran a blind “taste test” to take the bias out of the equation?
Thanks, Dolores Labs!
Dolores Labs ran a blind, side-by-side comparison of Google results vs. Bing results. Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk job market, they hired people to look at Bing and Google search results and mark which they preferred. The workers were not aware of which search engine produced which results, and the order was randomized to prevent the workers from favoring the one that appeared on the right or left.
What was the result?
In aggregate, people preferred Google over Bing by a small, yet statistically significant margin, which can be viewed as both good and bad for Google. But wait a minute. Forget the Google vs. Bing question for a minute. Is Bing even better than the thing it replaced? Dolores Labs tested Bing results vs. old Live Search results and found…drum roll, please… no aggregate statistical difference in preference— great ammo for those who argue Bing is just a re-branding job. Going back to the Google vs. Bing test, it’s worth noting that, despite a small difference in aggregate preference in favor of Google, there were individual queries for which people clearly preferred Bing.
More questions than answers
If people clearly prefer Bing over Google for certain queries, that raises several interesting questions—are the “Bing-preferred queries” random? Or are they groupable into certain areas? For example, if people clearly prefer Bing’s results when it comes to shopping or health, that may be good enough to chip away at Google’s market share. But if getting better results with Bing is a crapshoot, is that really enough for Bing to become a part of more people’s searching habits? Can Bing ever do better than its predecessors without performing better than Google on average? Is Bing trying to perform better than Google on average or is it targeting certain search types? And how much does performance ultimately matter when your competitor’s brand name has become a verb?
Only time will tell
As Dolores Labs points out, search engine user experience is about more than just relevancy, so this test certainly doesn’t paint a complete picture. Plus, like any pseudo-scientific study, people can easily find flaws with the methodology. But if you’re looking for objectivity in the search engine wars, studies like this are a refreshing change of pace.
August 22nd, 2009 at 3:18 am
Microsoft Bing would be the closet competitor of Google. but i still use Google because it shows more relevant results on the serp.
September 1st, 2009 at 11:17 pm
i have been evaluating the search results of Microsoft Bing compared to Google and they are comparable. Bing gives almost the same relevant search results just like Google.
September 11th, 2009 at 4:55 am
Bing search engine gives almost the same search results as Google. Looks like Google will now have a tough competition when it comes to search engine technology.
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:46 am
i have been using the BING search engine for a couple of weeks. it seems to be as good as Google but for some reason i would still want to stick with Google search engine –
February 4th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
I think that Bing is not as good as Google. Google would still index new websites faster than Bing. Microsoft would still need a lot of catching to do with GoogleBot.