ComScore announced today that Microsoft’s share of search result pages in the United States increased from 9.1% for the five days ending May 30 (before the launch of Bing) to 11.1% for the five days ending June 6, an increase of 2.0 percentage points. Similarly, penetration among searchers in the United States increased from 13.8% to 15.5% over the same period.
I will not compare the anatomy of the Bing and Google search engines. I will, however, try to analyze the quality of search results of the two engines to determine whether search performance may contribute to Microsoft's growing market share in search. In one of my previous posts I as asked the question of whether Google is a network effect. As it relates to search specifically, the question is whether Google’s search methodology is simply more accurate because (naturally) more searches have been performed on Google over the recently launched Bing. That’s why I’ve decided to perform an experiment: I will compare three random searches and their corresponding results on Google and Bing by using the following website that conveniently provides a side-by-side comparison: www.blackdog.ie/google-bing. I will then rate the results and conclude which search engine is more effective based on my highly limited experiment.
SEARCH #1: TRAVEL
Google Top 5 Results:
- Expedia
- Travelocity
- Orbitz
- Yahoo Travel
- New York Times Guides and Deals for Hotels
Bing Top 5 Results:
- Expedia
- www.travel.com
- www.travel.travel
- Yahoo Travel
- Travelocity
SEARCH #2: BUSINESS
Google Top 5 Results:
- Wikipedia
- www.business.com
- www.business.gov
- CNN Money
- BusinessWeek
Bing Top 5 Results:
- www.business.com
- www.business.gov
- Wikipedia
- CNN Money
- MSNBC Business
SEARCH #3: FLOWERS
Google Top 5 Results:
- 1800flowers
- FTD.com
- ProFlowers
- Teleflora
- Wikipedia
Bing Top 5 Results:
- 1800flowers
- ProFlowers
- FTD.com
- Phillip’s Florals
- Wikipedia
Based on these results, Google is the clear winner in my opinion. For the "travel" keyword search, Bing returned (among others) www.travel.travel, which is not as relevant as Google's search results. With respect to the "flowers" keyword search, Bing returned "Phillip's Florals", which is not as prominent as Google's search results. The "Business" search results seem to be a toss-up. So will "Bing it" be able to replace "Google it"? Only time will tell, but Bing is clearly experiencing some early-stage growing pains. The clear takeaway is that drivers beyond search performance are contributing to Microsoft's rapidly increasing market share in search.
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