Bing Search VS Google Comparison
June 17th 2009 4:35 PM
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Microsoft launched its new search engine called Bing on May 28, 2009. It is a rebranded and far superior search engine than their previous one, Live Search. I think the marketing ($80 million worth) and functionality of Bing will help it gain significant market share. Let’s face it, not many people used Live Search because of the unsexy brand name and lack of differentiators against competing search engines.
With the introduction of Bing, I think Microsoft will make significant headway in the market. Increased and innovative competition in this space can only help us, the consumers. The worst thing that could happen is for Google to actually completely monopolize the search market, and this makes that less of a possibility.
So how does Bing compare to Google? Surprisingly well. The gap between Google and Live Search has closed with the launch of Bing. Here is a head to head comparison of Bing VS Google in terms of speed, brand, functionality, and quality of results.
Speed
The speed of returned search results and loading of the search pages is one area where Google still outperforms Bing. Google has a clean and simple interface. It is appealing, and more importantly, loads in a flash. Bing on the other hand, while being pretty, takes longer to load which may turn off visitors with short attention spans (most). In terms of speed, Google takes it hands down.
Name / Brand
Bing is a huge step up for Microsoft in terms of branding their search engine. They recently did a study that suggested the name of a search engine itself affects how viewers perceive the usefulness of its results. I find Bing an appealing brand name because it is simple to say, remember, and has a nice ring to it. The opposite of the Zune in my opinion. It is much more attractive than ‘Live Search’ or ‘Microsoft Live Search’ before it.
That being said, it still has a very long way to catch Google in branding, which I doubt it ever will. It is a big step forward for Microsoft however. I actually think ‘Bing It’ sounds better and cooler than ‘Google It.’ Bing sounds like I just won something, and conjures up images of fun like an amusement park.
Features
So beneath the brand and appearance, how do the two search engines stack up in terms of functionality?
Categorized Results
The most visible change in Bing is its introduction of categories into search results. Your search term is organized into a categorized list on the left side of the search engine. I found this to be very helpful in navigating, and also suggesting additional search ideas and criteria I have not thought about before. This is probably the most valuable new feature I’ve found in Bing.
Related Searches
Under the categorized results in the explorer pane on the left hand side of the Bing interface, a list of related searches is displayed. Typically, someone using search takes a few iterations of refining their search terms before they find what they are looking for. I find suggesting similar searches to be another great way of helping people find what they are looking for, so kudos to Bing for that.
Other
There are a host of other features offered by Bing, that Google already has such as search history, image search, and video search. I will cover these in future posts, but from what I’ve seen Bing is a ‘me too’ solution in terms of these features. There’s nothing I’ve seen that is better than their Google counterparts, but most seem to be at or near the same level as Google which is impressive.
Quality of Results
There are a variety of tools to compare search results with Google and Bing head to head. Google-Bing Search searches both search engines at the same time for a given keyword phrase and returns both results on the same page. Bingle also presents a side by side comparison of both search engine results and let you drill down into either search engine with a click.
Microsoft’s Bing has definitely addressed the gaps in quality of search results between Live Search and Google. That being said, it is still not superior in its search results, but it is returning close to the same quality of relevant links as Google in my opinion. Use the tools presented above to compare the two search engines yourself and see what you think.
Conclusion
Bing has closed significant gaps between Microsoft’s previous Live Search, and Google. Its new brand name, functionality, and usability will grow Microsoft’s search market share. It has hovered around 3%, so there is a lot of room for growth. I do not see Bing ever posing a real threat to the Google search engine however.
It is very refreshing to see an increased level of competition in the search market, this will only mean good news for the people who use them.
Have you tried out Bing? What do you think of it, and how it compares to Google or Yahoo? Would like to hear your feedback below.
