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Bing More Effective Than Google?
Xiph1980 writes "Experian Hitwise claims Bing and Bing-powered search to be more effective than Google. The success rate for Bing searches in the U.S. in July was 80.04%, compared to 67.56% for Google. The market watcher defines 'success rate' as the percentage of search queries that result in a visit to a website. Searches made through sites owned by Yahoo, which farmed out search to Bing under a deal struck in 2009, were also more efficient than Google. Those searches yielded a success rate of 81.36%. The claims of Hitwise don't explain why I keep finding things like Microsoft service pack download pages better through google than through bing."
The claims of Hitwise don't explain why I keep finding things like Microsoft service pack download pages better through google than through bing.
That's because unlike Google, Bing doesn't favor its own services over others. Google favors their news service, maps, YouTube, shopping and every other service over others. Bing returns results objectively.
There are also differences in algorithms. Bing doesn't count so called junk-links while Google does. Bing prefers link inside good, relevant content. Google, on the other hand, counts all kinds of links. That's also why Google is full of shitty results, as SEO spammers game the system by spamming links to blog comments and every other place where they can get it. As Bing doesn't count those links almost at all it means their results are much more cleaner.
The problem Bing is facing is that they cannot get as much user data from searchers as Google. They miss a lot of long-tail keyword data that Google gets just because of their dominant market share. They also miss a lot of data of what result user thinks is relevant and good for the search query (both Google and Bing track which result user clicks on) and how much they spend on the site (both services again track if you return back from that result - if you come back quickly, it's obviously worthless result for the query). This is also the same reason why Bing toolbar gathers that data on users who use Google - the same thing that somehow got twisted in slashdotters heads as Bing scraping and stealing results from Google. The only thing they do is collect that click data.
Judging by the usual slashdot response of "but they should just improve their algorithms", people don't seem to get how immersively complex current search engines and their algorithms are. It's not just about following links on other websites - we have been past that for almost 10 years now. Algorithms are the base of the search engine, but they're almost worthless without all the keyword and usage data that really powers them. That is also why Google is so keen to collect every single piece of information they can get their hands on.
Microsoft has done a lot of things correctly with Bing. I would say their algorithms are even better than Google's, as they're able to compete with much smaller market share and data against Google and actually provide better results. It has come a long way from the Windows Live Search days.
Google+ vs. Facebook, and why Google+ will fail
Google is my preferred search engine, but the results are noticeably geek slanted. That's perfect for me, I am a geek. However it is not what everyone wants. Bing I find does a better job giving what a non-technical user might be after. You have to remember that as a tech person, what you are interested in may not mesh with what non-tech people are interested in.
So for me, Google it is, but that may not be true for everyone.
More to the point, just because someone doesn't click, doesn't mean it wasn't a success. Google manages to answer a lot of my queries without ever needing to click a link... If I search for "define: bum nuggets" or "234GBP in EUR" I don't click any links.
If I'm looking up the name of something (via related criteria), or searching for a particular statistic, my ideal is to find it displayed in one of the website titles or excerpts without ever having to click anything.
Google also displays dictionary entries, etc. so that I can generally lookup words and get the definition right in the results.
Many times I consider a result "successful" when I don't find what I'm looking for--it was evident from the results that the object or information I wanted did not exist, so, while disappointing, Google did the job I wanted it to do.
I think a far better test is whether, after searching for something, small keyword alterations are made. Granted, many times there is a level of human refinement where people start off not knowing quite what they're looking for, but I think there is probably a much better correlation of people trying different words because they didn't find what they wanted than not-clicking anything. Basically, if people are coming away from Google and Bing equally satisfied, and Bing users click more, that means Bing is less effective and making its users do more work to get their info.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
What about searches that were a mistake and corrected.
I admit that sometimes I use google as a spell checker and never click through to a page. I'm sure other people do this.
But, but., why don't you have your Windows systems set to auto-brick^h^h^h^h^hupdate?
Seriously, I use Google to make the Microsoft VS help usable. VS help is reasonably useful for specific syntax for a supported method/function. It is utterly useless, in my experience, to decide which method/function to use in the first place, whereas Google usually has an answer located within the first 20 links.
IMO, there are serious deficiencies in Google (word1-word2, as a hyphenated string, for example), but I think, once I get the hang of custom searches associated with my gmail account, it will be usable for a wider range of queries.
Lately it is *too* smart. When I'm searching for a specific term that happens to be a bit uncommon, I keep having to do my query like this:
"relatively_uncommon_word" -"common_word_with_similar_spelling"
Because it keeps guessing incorrectly that I actually want the common word instead of the one that I entered that is spelled similarly. I'm fine with the "Did you mean ... whatever" suggestions, but when Google uses those suggestions automatically in searches it gets really annoying. It means I keep entering my search, cursing at the wrong answer, and re-entering the search with the "-" on the common words before clicking on any links. Usually it only takes one failed search like that, but there are some occasions where I have had to eliminate two or even three words before I get what I want. I don't know what Bing does in this regard, but I'm wondering if a stupider search engine would be better in some ways compared to the way Google currently is.
If you let Bing be your search of choice you probably don't discern.
That's a baseless statement.
I have tried Bing on many occasions because I'm tired of Google's brokenness and new "features" it keeps rolling out*. Unfortunately, Bing still frequently returns things that I'm not interested in. Conversely, I rarely end up with a Google search that doesn't send me to what I want to find.
*I am completely fed up with Google's hijacking of my search terms -- Google used to predict what you wanted to search for and suggest it to you. Now it just takes you to where it thinks you want to go, and you're lucky if it'll spit out a "did you mean?" More troublesome is that frequently, where it thinks I want to go is completely ridiculous and nonsensical. Here's a real scenario: I searched for "united states weather radar". Google returned "Showing results for "unted states weather ra". Search instead for "united states weather radar". Who searches for "weather ra"?? This happens several times a day to me.
Let's ask two popular search engines the same simple question:
"Who's the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks?"
Seriously. Try it on Bing, then try it on Google.
Game over.
Try it on Wolfram Alpha. Google and Bing both got shafted.