Something that would probably be worthy of a blog post: the Google results in the Bing It On challenge are unfairly neutered.
Try doing the Bing It On search for something like "radiohead". You see two columns of plain old search results, both are fine. But if you go straight to Google.com and search for "radiohead", you get more than just the normal search results, you get a bunch of extra details on the right side of the page. Those extra details are super relevant and helpful, like the band's members, popular songs, upcoming events, etc. If you go to Bing.com and try the same thing, it also has some extra stuff on the right, but it isn't nearly as good.
This happens for lots of searches. Google often shows some really helpful domain-specific information, but that extra stuff doesn't show up in the Bing it On challenge.
This is also true for sports related searches. On Google when I search for the Dallas Cowboys I get the scores of their 2 most recent games and with one click I can have their full schedule without ever leaving Google. On Bing I get their last games score and a few upcoming games, but if I want more info then it takes me to foxsports.com.
Apparently Bing's press release didn't state what proportion of people found Bing to be better than Google, or even what proportion found it better-or-equal.
If those statistics had been favorable, they would assuredly have been reported.
Look at it this way: how many of the people who visit the page are going to switch away from Bing to Google?
Probably not too many. So even if they just get lucky one in fifty times with a search on which bing does much better, that's a huge net positive for if lots of people try it out.
From the headline: 33 Percent Of Google Users Will Use Bing More After ‘Bing It On’ Challenge
From the article: 33% said they would use Bing more often after taking the Challenge
Two very different statements IMO - how many of those 33% are ever actually going to think about it again rather than just reverting to their old habits?
Very true, realy it is 33% of those who bothered to try it and bothered not to verify the results and bothered to tell them. I had a go, had a big fat picture splat up on my screen with some perverce advent calandar mentality going on. I concluded Bing failed at that point, and as I didn't record my input as many others then I was never counted.
That raises the point that optional feedback will gain 100% of those who migrate at the time and a far lower percentage of those who will not. So that 33%, well you can half that and half again and still be short on the number who tried it.
Now if that 33% was also backed up by access log saying we had 10,000 unique vistors to this experiment and 33% of those said they were using bing now then I'd be less sceptic.
You can also bet this 33% will get turned into 33.33 recuring % or 1/3rd and from there the lie will be complete.
I use Bing as my default search engine, but for anything tech related, if I have trouble finding it on Bing, I switch to Google. There is clearly a difference between the two.
Google seems to have simply more pages indexed and that helps with obscure error messages or API usages, but seems to hinder it when searching for anything relatively common.
That's my experience as well. Because of this I use DDG as my main search engine now, mostly for privacy but also because I can switch to Google when it or Bing's index is lacking.
I don't know. I'm not a techie but a math student and most of my searches are math related, not technology related. When I took the Bing challenge Google beat Bing 5-0.
I also had similar results. On the searches where I chose something I knew about to search for, I always chose Google's results. On the one example where I chose a suggested example (Halloween Costumes) I chose Bing. My other searches were for a specific camera, the type of a battery used in an old film camera, a historic sail boat designer and a Rails method.
The two thoughts I had were: 1) Have the suggested examples been prescreened to favor Bing? 2) Do the Bing results favor a shallower explorations of topics while Google's favor more in depth ones?
For kicks and giggles I switched to Bing on Safari on OS X and iOS to see if I'm denying myself search results. I'd assess the results and sometimes I'd go with what Bing returned but instinctively I'd end up going back to Google to get more accurate results.
I think it's going to take more than "The Pepsi Challenge" to get people to switch. To get people to switch Google would have to start giving worse results than it gives now. Otherwise you're likely not changing. Even if Bing gave better results I'm not sure people would switch due to inertia.
I think it's important to also consider that most of the user's trying the 'Bing It On' challenge are already at least considering switching services or interested enough in bing to give it a shot. Even if 33% of these users went on to use Bing more after, this doesn't represent your average google user.
I also doubt that 33% who say that are going to use it more actually will. If it was that easy Bing would already be huge.
Quite a few friends of mine took this test. 4 of the 6 of us who felt we almost certainly choose google could not load the results page. Not exactly a scientific study but I thought it was fishy. Anyone run into similar results?
I had the same result. The last page would never load for me. I know picked mostly Google results (because I recognized some links). But I tried again and purposely picked the Bing results and the last page still did not load. (I'm using Firefox 18.)
Bing does far less word-stemming in my experience which is probably because of inferior technology but it's often a more desirable result.
For instance if you search a weird business name, Google tries to make it into more statistically and phonetically common words. Bing gives you more of a literal search. So they're going to wow a proportion of users who find that's what they want.
Google is so annoying sometimes with word-stemming. You used to be able to use the + sign to turn it off. Then you had to use quotes. Now the quotes don't even seem to work. Sometime Google is too smart for its own good.
I wonder why they didn't consider going for a blended approach to the results (assuming there isn't too many permutations for the search term) with a disambiguation selector similar to the following, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=test
Would save clicking around, and probably solve the use case for 90% of people.
Interesting point; this has bothered me as well. I'm usually reduced to re-searching with "query -word -word" to remove the results targeted by the stemmed words.
I found myself feeling better about search results because they were styled like Google's results. I was assuming they were pulling a switcheroo on me, but they werent.
I took the Bing challenge and I did feel that the Bing results were better, but because they felt like Google's results from maybe 3 years ago. Anyone who uses Google often can tell what Google search results look like, and those identifying features were exactly what turned me off -- Gplus results, the image galleries, other "features", etc.
WTF? A search page on Bing includes:
* image search results
* a 300 pixel wide column on the RHS for linking your Facebook account to retrieve Facebook results
* News search
* "Related searches"
* "Trends to talk about"
If only MS would invest more into improving their products and less on advertising, then they might not even have to advertise. Google's search wasn't really advertised, it was just the best -- so naturally, users flocked to it.
I really think at this point that MS is just trying to outright buy market share with these elaborate campaigns.
I think this is not correct. Microsoft spends a lot in R&D. According to this [1] (as of d 3/21/2012):
The top 10 companies and the amount they spend on R&D
(in billions) in the past 12 months were, according to
S&P Capital IQ:
• Microsoft (MSFT): $9.4
• Pfizer (PFE): $8.4
• Intel (INTC): $8.4
• Merck (MRK): $8.3
• Johnson & Johnson (JNJ): $7.5
• International Business Machines (IBM): $6.3
• Cisco Systems (CSCO): $5.6
• Google (GOOG): $5.2
• Eli Lilly (LLY): $5.0
• Oracle (ORCL): $4.4
Apple is 18th on the list, spending $2.6 billion, behind other
technology giants such as Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Cisco, Oracle,
Qualcomm, Hewlett-Packard and Amazon.com. Apple's R&D spending
as a percentage of its revenue of $127.8 billion was 2%.
It's interesting that you throw the Apple comment in out of context and blow your argument as a result. Apple's amazing success with low R&D expenditure shows how small the relationship between R&D and great products is.
It also says a lot about accounting, as how time is booked in an accounting system for tax purposes will drastically alter those numbers, even if the same work gets done.
>(Ford)'s amazing success with low R&D expenditure (they had one engine design that ran from the 70's to the 90's with no modification or improvement despite the industry ballooning with different technologies during that time) shows how small the relationship between R&D and great products is.
And no-one ever accused Ford of making shoddy cars that fall apart the second they leave the floor... for many decades solid...
I included Apple's comment, which seemed to be out of context to you, because it was not on the top-10 list, but it was the next paragraph in the linked article, and seemed to be interesting so you could have a view of the mayor tech players.
"Apple's amazing success with low R&D expenditure shows how small the relationship between R&D and great products is."
Also, it's not my intention to make a comparison between Apple and MS here, but I think it's clear that MS spends a lot more because it has a broader set of products and services.
Furthermore, you need to define "great product". Because what would seem to be great to consumers, may be totally useless to enterprises. And that is reflected today in the market.
I'm not sure this is correct. You're assuming there are algorithmic changes to search that will substantially improve results to the point where the average user will notice - like there was when google made its rise.
At this point-barring some revolutionary new way to search-Microsoft might have to heavily invest in advertisements to gain any ground.
Indeed. 12 years ago, back when I juggled 4 or 5 different engines — I'd have welcomed something like Bing with open arms.
The thing is, in those 12 years, I've invested lots of data and time in Google. But be that as it may, I feel like I'm noticing a decline in the quality of Google search results. And there are rare occasions where I do give ol' Bing a few cranks to cover more bases.
I would challenge you to try Million Short vs Google for really long tail searches (example; gluten free cookie recipes). There's also a side-by-side comparison page setup in the same fashion as the bingiton challenge. millionshortiton.com
Please give the "Million Short It On" challenge a try at http://www.MillionShortItOn.com challenge a try. You might be surprised by Million Short for long tail searches.
That Bing It On challenge fails to disguise Google's results to me. Tons of Youtube links, and the styling on the image results part is always Google-y.
Weirdly enough the fact that this is a marketing campaign by Microsoft seems to be ignored when considering the numbers in the press release. There is also the curious omission of the percentage of people who found Bing to be “better” than Google.
Any reaction to Bing could have been a result of people being exposed to it for the first time not necessarily it being the “better” option. It also could be that people are having a positive impression simply because it’s not as bad as they imagined it would be, as indicated by this claim: “64% of people were surprised by the quality of Bing’s web search results.”.
Also there is the matter of the ridiculous disclaimer about the features being omitted in the side-by-side as if they aren't integral to the search experience, not to mention that seemingly all queries to Google appear to be originating from Seattle which degrades the quality of local queries by user located elsewhere.
Try doing the Bing It On search for something like "radiohead". You see two columns of plain old search results, both are fine. But if you go straight to Google.com and search for "radiohead", you get more than just the normal search results, you get a bunch of extra details on the right side of the page. Those extra details are super relevant and helpful, like the band's members, popular songs, upcoming events, etc. If you go to Bing.com and try the same thing, it also has some extra stuff on the right, but it isn't nearly as good.
This happens for lots of searches. Google often shows some really helpful domain-specific information, but that extra stuff doesn't show up in the Bing it On challenge.