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."

Comments

Re:Bing vs. Google

[jhoegl]

Well, that is interesting because I often find what I need on the first page of Google searches, sometimes second page if it is an odd issue I am working with.

This of course is related to the fact that I use 0% of Bing searches.

What? The information I provided is just as relevant as the unsupported article or reply regarding these two.

Independent statistics are required, otherwise its a he said she said scenario.

But did they found what they were looking for?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Just become somebody clicks through to the site doesn't mean the search result was a success.

Re:But did they found what they were looking for?

[beelsebob]

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.

Re:But did they found what they were looking for?

[thegarbz]

The queries where Google provides a direct answer probably wasn't included, but quite often the information is there right in the summary of results. When you search for something in a sentence typically the results are displayed in a summary.

For instance I want to know how many leap seconds have been applied to UTC, and I search for "current leap seconds". Google doesn't provide an instant answer. Surely I could click any one of the first 5 links and get the answer too. However I don't need to, the 6th link has this in the summary:
"31 Dec 2008 – There will NOT be a leap second introduced into UTC on that date. The current number of leap seconds is 15. The future number of leap ..."

Sorted with no click through required.

Re:Bing vs. Google

[Bert64]

There is also the advantage of small marketshare...
You have all the spammers out there trying their best to game google, but how many of them bother to try gaming bing or some of the other small engines? Same thing happened in the early days of google, altavista was full of spam while google had clean results.

Re:In my experience it depends on what you want

[Bert64]

Google track you, and if you search for geeky things regularly then it will learn thats what you are usually looking for and deliver relevant results.
If you use a completely clean browser, from an IP you've not used before, you will get different results...

Re:Bing vs. Google

[Halo1]

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.

Since when does Google have a service to download Microsoft service packs?

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.

Google also filters on link farms. Of course their filtering isn't perfect, but it would surprise me a lot if Microsoft had discovered the magic algorithm to get rid of all "search engine optimization" gaming, and it's simply wrong to say that Google "counts all kinds of links".

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.

One of my main issues with bing has nothing to do with complex search algorithms. Just search for e.g. shoes. The first page of results already contains two sets of duplicate results in my case: www.shoes.com and www.shoes.com/womens (sic, it actually stands for "women's"), and www.shoes.be and www.shoes.be/schoenwinkels.asp?l=k.

I get this with virtually every search term I've ever tried on Bing, which means that there are much less individually useful results than on Google (which will group all similar results from the same domain and then let you move on).

PS: yes, this is the first time in my life I've searched for the term "shoes" on the Internet

Try this simple test:

[theoriginalturtle]

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.

Re:Try this simple test:

[wizrd_nml]

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.

Re:Arbitrary

[mcgrew]

This has practically nothing to do with "success rate"

It depends on whose success you're talking about. Bing is more successful for site owners, Google is more successful for the person searching.

Re:In other words; people who use Bing trust resul

[MasaMuneCyrus]

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.

Re:Bing vs. Google

[russotto]

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.

Use Bing for "google stock price". What's the top link on the page? A link to Bing Finance.

Use Bing for "statue of liberty". Top link besides ads? Bing News. Also included are links to Bing Maps.

Try "purchase photoshop". Top link besides ads? Bing Shopping.

Run away, little troll, run away.