Bing Beats Out Google in Search Effectiveness

Google has been in the search engine business longer than most, and compared to the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo!, it has dedicated far more effort into making its own product the best it can be. To call that a smart move would be an understatement, because Google’s search engine business gained users early, and helped lead the company to become one of the wealthiest in the business.

Even today, most people call Google.com home for their search needs, and given my experience with the search engine, I’d say it’s for good reason. More often than not, Google has always been able to provide more reasonable results when compared to the competition, but according to market watcher Experian Hitwise, that’s changed in recent years.

In a study that tested the accuracy rate of the big three search engines, it was discovered that a Bing-powered search was far more likely to lead someone directly to a website than Google. At Bing.com, that success rate was 80.04%, while Yahoo!’s Bing-powered engine scored a little bit higher, at 81.36%.

Google, on the other hand, scored just 67.56%, leaving much to be desired. It also leaves room for a lot of improvement, since even 80% isn’t that impressive when you think about it. It’s also fair to note that the same study was conducted last year, and the results were about the same – meaning no improvement has been made, whatsoever.

I personally use a blend of both search engines; Bing for regular searches and Google for technical searches. Where technical searches are concerned (eg: computer problems, OS issues, et cetera), I’d have to say Google is about 3x more accurate than Bing. This is based on the fact that I often search technical queries with Bing by accident first (it’s my default search engine), and then go to Google, only to find the correct page faster.

Despite Google’s lack of accuracy though, I’d be hard-pressed to see its usage go down anytime soon. Though Bing may be more accurate, when it launched there were nothing but complaints from the masses, and if you were a Bing user, people tended to laugh at you (really). It seems to me that accuracy isn’t what’s king – it’s familiarity.