Bing recently chose a very interesting way of figuring out just how relevant they are in the world of search engines. It was also a decent way of promoting their search engine, especially since the results of their little test came out in their favor. Since Bing came to be, a lot of people have still chosen Google to fulfill their search engine needs. Google seems to have been around since the very beginning of the internet, so people have become quite comfortable with the company, but Bing has a lot to offer that many people have given themselves a chance to recognize.
Bing, having quite a bit of confidence in their search engine, put themselves right up against the biggest name in search engines, testing just who can give people the better results. The conducted a test with 1,000 search engine users over the age of 18, asking them to type the same search query into both Google and Bing and see which results they preferred. After fives searches, the respondents were asked to average out the results from each search, and find which search engine they seemed to prefer. Basically, Bing made these people that were surveyed prove that internet users were not giving Bing the chance that it deserved.
When the results were tallied, the outcome was clear – people chose Bing web search results over Google nearly 2:1 in the blind comparison tests. Specifically, of the nearly 1000 participants: 57.4% chose Bing more often, 30.2% chose Google more often; 12.4 % resulted in a draw.
Bing then wrote in their blog post,
Why did we think a blind comparison test of the pure web search results would be valuable? Because it is the best way to really test the quality of web search results where the majority of clicks occur – without the influence of the ingrained, habitual impact of the Google brand. Now you know there is a better alternative to Google.
This test seems like one of the best decisions that Bing has made, especially since the results are already being spewed all over Twitter. Bing will absolutely be seeing more traffic to their search engine due to this test. It was a form of proof to the public, as well as a way to market their search engine. Somebody over at the Bing headquarters has some great ideas.
The study was not conducted by Bing, but it was conducted by an independent research company called Answers Research for Bing’s benefit. This study just shows that people should start using Bing, and that Google, though it may seem like some sort of internet overlord, may not have all the answers, or the best ones. With 2 to 1 results in the test, it is clear that Bing brings something to the table, and a bit more focus should be put on the company. Who knows; they may just end up with the same or better results than Google’s search engine someday.
