You might have seen the commercials online or on TV: Bing has been waging a marketing war on Google, claiming that blind users prefer Bing’s search over Google’s by a 2-to-1 margin.
But has Microsoft’s search engine really advanced enough to pose a credible threat to Google? While you can test the comparison on your own at BingitOn.com, I’ve identified strengths and weaknesses for both. Either engine may have an edge depending on your personal preferences.
From social integration to speed to quality, here’s a look at how they stack up:
Google advantage: Provides more relevant information.
While Bing’s recent changes make it a more viable search option, it’s still lacking in terms of result quality in response to informative queries.
In this case, I tested the phrase, “income tax rates.” While the Google search engine results page (SERP) displayed information on both 2012 and 2013 tax rates in the first five listings, the only dated information found in Bing’s results was a single listing mentioning 2011 tax rates.
Bing advantage: Social integrations are stronger.
Bing’s results win in terms of the smoothness of its social integrations. The company’s contracts with both Facebook and Twitter give it access to more social data than Google, which must rely on the lesser-used Google+ network. The way it integrates social recommendations into its SERPs is also much less cluttered than Google’s results.
Google advantage: Instant search saves time.
Although Google and Bing both offer instant search features — which display potential search queries as you’re typing into the search box — Google’s instant search tends to provide more relevant results, more quickly.
To measure this, I began entering the sample query, “latest Packers score” into both engines. Google provided this as a possible query result after only “latest Pack,” while Bing required the full “latest Packers s” to turn up the same result.
more to come on this topic from your Denver SEO company, Maxim Edge
