Righteous Marketing » Bing

Google vs. Bing: The Average User’s Perspective

Robert — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:02:42 +0000

Lacey reached out to me about writing a guest post and I thought that it would be interesting to see how a non-PPC wizard feels about Google vs. Bing. Below is her experience

Many of you may already have your preconceived notions about Google and Bing. Some may even have a preference for one and refuse to use the other. Personally, I’ve always used Google, and didn’t really see a reason to switch, but I always wondered exactly what the difference would be. Because I recently got a new puppy, I decided to search for “puppy toys” in each search engine to see which site brought me better results. More specifically, I wanted something that would be good for dogs under one year old that are teething and coping with a new environment.

Google

When I first entered my keywords into Google’s search box, this is the screen they presented. The top three links are for ads, naturally, because that is how Google makes money, but I also noticed something else. I could barely see their “Shopping” section at the bottom of the screen because so much space is taken at the top. My first instinct was to go to the first item that had my search terms, so I clicked on the third ad.

When I clicked on the ad, I was immediately bombarded with loads of information. The print was small and it seemed as if I was really going to have to search for the best toy for my puppy. There were a lot of options, but I think it would have been better if those options were easier to find (i.e. categories like plush dog toys, teething puppy toys, holiday toys, etc.).

Bing

When I searched for my product on Bing, the first thing I noticed was the pictures of the products in the middle of the screen. I now realize that there were also pictures of products in my Google search, but they weren’t as noticeable because they were so far down the screen. Bing has designed their site to help viewers get right to what they need.

I was very intrigued by their pictures, so I went directly to their shopping section, and it was much easier to narrow down my search with the options to the left, and I was able to find exactly what I was looking for.

Lacey Cook is an author who writes guest posts on the topics of business, marketing, credit cards, and personal finance. Additionally, she works for a website that focuses on educating readers about their first credit card.

Yahoo/Bing PPC Merger Delayed Until 2011?

Robert — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:42:38 +0000

The merger of Yahoo and Bing into a single interface is the most anticipated PPC event of 2010. We talked all about it in 2009 and I’ve been quite excited because I’m not a fan of Yahoo’s interface. Information has been a bit lacking, but last week we got a video on the Microsoft Advertising blog about the topic.

Say what?

Okay, lot’s of fun pencil drawings and clever animation…blah, blah, blah…”WE ALSO MAY CONSIDER POSTPONING THE TRANSITION TO EARLY 2011″. What? Go back to the 1:30 mark and listen to it again. What you hear is Microsoft giving themselves an escape hatch to push this implementation to next year.

Dang! Six more months of Yahoo’s crappy interface.

Bing is for Real

Robert — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:23:56 +0000

This week has seen some big news from Microsoft’s new search engine Bing. On Monday Bing launched their new and improved visual search feature. To make it work you need to have Silverlight installed, but I’ve played with it and it is really cool. It operates like a Rolodex of pictures and once you click on a picture you like it brings up a page of search results based on that picture. So say you scroll through their celebrity pictures and click a picture of Natalie Portman (a very attractive lady IMO). Bam, you get the search results for Natalie Portman. Same for movies (District 9 looks intriguing) or dog breeds.

Then yesterday I came across the most recent Nielsen report on search market share. Low and behold Bing has over 10% all by itself. Add in Yahoo’s additional 16% and Bing effectively has over a quarter of the market. Not to shabby for an engine still in its first year of existence. What was the last search engine with this type of growth? Oh yeah, Google!

What Does It Mean Though?

You may be thinking “So What?” Well, in the SEO world we now have a legitimate contender to Google. There will be two mysterious algorithms to guess at and we may even find areas where the tactics to improve rankings in one engine will hurt you in the other (not likely, but possible). For PPC this means that the Big 3 just became the big 2, a la Coke v. Pepsi, which I’m fine with since I’ve never been a fan of Yahoo’s interface and they don’t have an off-line desktop editing tool.

Where Does Bing Go From Here

First, they need to keep pushing their image search because right now they are way ahead of Google in that area. While everyone loved Google for getting rid of the clutter that portals presented, Bing can get traction by making search results “pretty” (yes it sounds lame, but ask people what they like about Bing and the cosmetics are almost universally top of mind).

Second, they need to improve their algorithm. Results are good, but not great. I know they’re making tons of changes already but the only way to win over new users is to present great results when people inevitably visit Bing and run a regular old text search.

Lastly, Microsoft needs to stick with it. Over the last couple years Microsoft has changed the name of their search offering too many times. MSN, Live Search, Bing. Now that they have some traction they need to stick it out (and likely keep forking over millions in advertising, but that’s a given. This is Microsoft after all).

What else would you like to see from Bing?