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Uncategorized Tuesday, October 2nd 2012 at 5:30 pm

Bing It On Again: People Chose Bing Results Nearly 2 to 1 Over Google

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Statistics are always somewhat questionable. The data gathered always depends on the size of the sample, what kind of conditions it was collected under, and all that. Bias is notoriously difficult to remove. That’s why it’s not surprising to find out that Microsoft’s “Bing It On” challenge has now churned up the conclusion that users prefer Bing’s search results at a ratio of “nearly” 2 to 1 compared to Google’s. It’s more complicated than that, though.

The Next Web explains:

Now, certainly the sample of folks who took the test are not representative of the larger Internet population, and likely contain a decent slug of Microsoft fans. Even with that in mind, winning two to one is a real accomplishment for Microsoft’s search team.

Bing, however, doesn’t expect the test to drive much change in use patterns in the short-term, however: “Of course, the ‘Google habit’ is strong in many people and habits don’t change overnight.”

It’s also telling that the fine print indicates a mere 4,706 surveys were completed. That’s far from being a representative slice of the greater population of the Internet. It did allow for us to create the horrible image above, though, so there’s that at least.

(Bing via The Next Web)

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  • Jack Bond

    I took that test. Bing looks subtly flashier, but the trick is that deep down the results aren’t any more relevant. I got wise to their game and ended up choosing Google.

  • Asreal

    It isn’t really fair to judge it like this (as the article states); Bing is the default search engine for IE by… well default. Of course it is going to do well, especially if people use the address bar for their searches.

    (Did anyone notice how hard it was to set google as the default search engine (in the UK) for the address bar when IE9 came out? I had to visit the US version of the site just to add it properly – Sneaky MS tactics, or just a bug?)

    Although, after years of anti-MS bias I must admit Bing is growing on me a little; the image and video results are well set out and actually seem to return different (and useful) results when compared to google.

    Just wish they hadn’t have called it bing; just makes me remember the dorky insurance salesman out of Groundhog Day… @_@

  • Anonymous

    well, most people find the result on the first page, where Bing always does it better.

  • UncleScott

    I found Bing less likely to return good results when search terms were entered as natural language. If you ask a question like “How do you make red velvet cupcakes?” in both engines google returns recipes, the top sites returned in Bing are things like ehow and yahoo questions, while google gives you results from foodnetwork and simplyrecipes. Since I like to search in natural language google wins for me.

  • Idlethoughts

    And now I’m going to keep remembering that too, thanks a lot.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1157851424 Scott Beeson

    I’m a huge microsoft fanboy, but I’ve always used Google. I average about 600-700 searches a month (based on Google Account Activity). 2 months ago I forced myself to use Bing exclusively for an entire month. I loved the rewards and some of the features, but went back to Google immediately. Google’s results are just better. I don’t care about any polls. Also, some of the tools are indispensable, like narrowing by date. (I like searching for results from the last year a lot).

  • http://twitter.com/pounddollarsign Michael Corey

    I took the challenge a couple weeks ago and Google won 3, tied 2. The biggest thing for me was Google performs calculations automatically and Bing does not. If I enter “123 JPY in USD” I expect the conversion to be displayed on the search page, I don’t want to have to click into a site to find my results.

  • http://twitter.com/Mesoian Mesoian

    I took that test 3 or 4 times. Google won every time save for 2 instances where it tied. Makes me wonder what data pool they’re taking their 4800 results.