Bing vs. Google
Microsoft recently fired up a new ad campaign for its Bing search engine, titled the ‘Bing It On’ campaign. The campaign takes a Pepsi vs. Coke blind taste test approach to the question “Which search engine is the best?” If you visit BingItOn.com, Microsoft challenges searchers in the US to:
Conduct five search queries of your choice and compare unbranded Web search results from Bing and Google side by side. For each search result, you choose a winner or declare it a draw. You then get to see which search engine came out on top.
Microsoft’s marketing materials state: “People chose Bing web search results over Google nearly 2 to 1 in blind comparison tests.” We decided to test their theory in the office here at Drift, and we beg to differ. Although Microsoft used an independent marketing research firm to carry out the study, and even though they had a much larger sample size (1000 people, versus 10 of us Drifters), our results were vastly different than theirs. We found that out of all ten of us, six preferred Google to Bing!
Microsoft is desperately trying to get users to switch to Bing; PC users are used to having Google as their default search engine. It’s become second nature for users to “Google” something, and getting them to change their ways will prove to be an uphill battle. Bing currently has 15 percent of the U.S. search market share, but if you consider the fact that Bing is powered by Yahoo search, that figure jumps to 28 percent. Regardless, in the search engine battle it’s all about market share. More market share equals more advertising, and that means more revenue. Microsoft wants Bing to be a big player in the search space, but they’ll have to compete with the exceptional relevancy that Google provides in its results.
If you visit http://www.bingiton.com/, try it out for yourself and post your results below! We’d love to hear how it worked out for you, because we’re betting you simply can’t beat Google’s relevancy with its search engine algorithm (at least not yet).
Source:
http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-bing-it-on-challenge-beats-googles-results-21-7000003981/
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2203640/Bing-It-On-Bing-Goes-Toe-to-Toe-Against-Google
