Bing Users' Click-Through Rate 55% Higher Than Google Users'

An anonymous reader writes "Techcrunch is running a story that shows some pretty significant differences in the clicking habits of users of Yahoo, Google, and Bing. As it turns out, folks who arrive at websites via Bing are 55% more likely to click on an ad than if they arrived from Google (data based on the Chitika network). Essentially, people who use Bing are far more susceptible to advertising. Bing has acquired a decent market share in such a short time, but could it just be that they've reaped the low hanging fruit of those particularly persuaded by advertising? When their huge marketing campaign winds down, what kind of staying power will it have?"

Comments

What a surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would have thought that people who would switch to an inferior search engine based on an aggressive marketing campaign would be more susceptible to advertising?

Re:What a surprise

[causality]

The use of Bing COULD be boosted by IE 8 choosing that by default. How many users install software defaults?

As for clicking on ads, there are lots of potential reasons, including the ones mentioned here. But of course, since it's a "decision engine" people are more likely to follow that decision. ;-)

I would be very surprised if there were not a strong correlation between users who don't customize their settings and users who more frequently respond to advertising the way that the advertisers want them to.

That's because defaults are intended to be applied to millions of users and therefore cannot be ideal for all users or even very many of them. At least, I'll say that the number of people who use all-default settings is far greater than the number of users for whom this is ideal. The greater the number of options which can be customized, the more true this is. Someone who has an "ideal" in mind for how their setup should be and is willing to undergo at least some minor effort to arrange it is more likely to be a more independent thinker, reducing the susceptibility to external suggestion such as advertising.

Re:What a surprise

[morghanphoenix]

Something just bothers me about the "decision engine" thing. I'd like to think people are smart enough to make their own decisions and not follow whatever their search engine tells them to do, but for some reason I doubt that is the case. I think the major reason people click on more adds when using Bing is that those of us who Google already have some idea of what we are looking for, those of us who use Bing are looking for someone or something to make those choices for us. As for me, even if Bing was the best search engine ever invented, it gives me a bloody headache to look at it.

Re:What a surprise

[causality]

Yes you can: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030514035516436 It's just Mac & Linux users can, on occasion, manage to do something without a GUI. I'm not saying all Windows users can't, but that huge slice of market share Windows users brag about all the time includes a lot of really dumb people.

I don't think those users are merely dumb. A truly dumb person can't help it, and so I wouldn't fault them for that any more than I would blame a paraplegic for being unable to walk. What I do blame those "dumb users" for is something I call willful helplessness. That's when the information is out there, freely available, the person in question is literate and has 'Net access, and refuses to educate themselves even for simple configuration issues. It wouldn't be so bad except that these same people often complain that they don't get the results they want, and/or they think it's a terribly unreasonable thing to suggest that they can help themselves, almost like it's some kind of insult. Usually that's followed by something like "I'm not a computer expert" as though changing basic settings makes one an "expert."

Many such users are on Windows. There could probably be debates about whether that's because Windows inherently suits them or if it's merely because that's what the computer came with and this kind of user is quite unlikely to evaluate other options since that would require the learning that they so resent. The easiest way to identify such folks is that they can use the same machine for years and never know much more about it than when they started. That's what amazes me. It seems like it would take a lot more work to make sure you don't pick up some knowledge here and there that would accumulate over the years, but I suppose you could say that they are true to their passive mentality.

Re:What a surprise

[causality]

There's a pandemic of Microsoft Hating syndrome, as discovered by Linus Torvalds.

"Syndrome" sounds like a disease. When you really do engage in anticompetitive, manipulative, underhanded practices, have been convicted in multiple nations of doing so in an illegal fashion, have (in my opinion) resorted to bribery to compromise independent standards bodies, have made Webmasters everywhere bear additional costs because you refuse to fully adhere to open standards, and have abused the meaning of "updates to the OS" to install phone-home software (WGA), perhaps it's understandable that many people won't like you? Just maybe that's not a "syndrome" but a predictable outcome?

Mr. Torvalds made a case for why it is sometimes expedient to work with a company that is important in its industry. He has not made the case that their tactics should be celebrated or that it's unreasonable to dislike them. The only way to make that case is to prove that everyone should enjoy the ill effects of abusive practices and that any and all pushback against them is wrong and unfounded. That would not be the argument of a sane person.

Re:What a surprise

[countertrolling]

...willful helplessness...

I think the "correct" term is learned helplessness, and it is not entirely a matter of free will as much as it is of conditioning. And it really shows itself in our dealings with authority and why more people don't rebel against it.

Re:What a surprise

[TheRaven64]

Wait, you're seriously suggesting the fact that you can hand-edit the binary to change a hard-coded constant string (and have it reset every time you update the binary) counts as the ability to change it? By that token, I can run Linux executables on OS X; I just need to edit the kernel binary to add system call handlers for all of the Linux system calls...

Sort of a double edged sword...

[Utopia Tree]

to be able to say our users are sheep

The reason

[Jugalator]

It's because users of Microsoft services are more stupid than the general population. There, I said it!

Well,

[theorem4]

Would that click through rate include the ads for Cashback? If so, I might consider the results skewed.

S.O.P.

[meerling]

With anything that has been marketed/hyped, never rely on the initial numbers.
Ignore the first month of a search engine, and the first week of a new movie.
After the curious and easily manipulated are out of the way, you can get a real result.

Re:Umm... cash back anyone?

[ChronoFish]

Who said you can't beat free?

Bing l10n..

[Seth Kriticos]

I'm in a Germany and my browser language preference is set to English (because I prefer it).

Now most sites (including Google) manage to get my geo-location and annoy me with a German start page (ignoring my language preferences). (At least I could set my prefs. at google, but its bothering to do this for every site I visit).

Now visiting Bing gave me something unusual: a hybrid l10n. The controls were partly in English and the search suggestions (random stuff at the button of the screen) came in German. Searching for something gave only German results.

And there I thought it couldn't get worse than it is already.. but this irks the hell out of me.

ps. And the scaling of mostly everything was messed up too.. Way to go if you want to convince technical folks, Microsoft..

Re:Umm... cash back anyone?

[Etherized]

I hear you. I'll often find products using google or deal sites, then go through bing just for the cash back - it would be really silly if that sort of usage counted as a bing success story.

TFA doesn't specify whether this sort of usage is included in the comparison.

Slimy Submission Text

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the type of story summary used here that shows early signs of the disease Linus was talking about. What kind of lowlife asshole uses a phrase like:

reaped the low hanging fruit of those particularly persuaded by advertising

It's advertising, dickhead. If people like what is being advertised they will click the link, watch the commercial, and buy the product. Why is someone who investigates an advertisement deemed less intelligent? Does not fast forwarding through a commercial make you a moron? Does leafing through the Sunday morning circular make you a fool? Ohh, that's right, they are using a Microsoft service. Tee hee. So witty, so funny.

I used to really like Slashdot, but the quality of the submissions is really taking an ugly tone. Who do we blame? The people writing the submission? Or the person who allows it to be post. This isn't even a Kdawson story so we can't blame him. Slashdot doesn't seem to have any commitment to making sure summaries are well written and free from juvenile bias.