Which search engine offers the ‘best’ results? Google or Bing? Here is one method of comparing. Consider the Google alphabet and the Bing Alphabet – the words that are suggested by the respective search engines when you type a single letter into the search box.
In the US this comparison doesn’t really provide a clear leader – both search engines offer broadly similar suggestions. If you are looking for results from other countries in the world (yes, corporate America, there are some), Google wins hands down. Here’s why.
Here are the top three suggestions for Bing and for Google.com – this is effectively their US site search results.
Google.com
- Amazon, AOL, American Airlines
- Best Buy, Bank of America, Bed bath and beyond
- Craiglist, cnn, costco
- Dictionary, Disney channel, delta airlines
- Ebay, espn, expedia
- Facebook, facebook logon, food network
- Gmail, google maps, google earth
- Hotmail, hulu, home depot
- Imdb, itunes, ikea
- Jcpenney, jet blue, jersey shore
- Kohls, kmart, Kelly blue book
- Lowes, lady gaga, limewire
- Myspace, mapquest, msn
- Netflix, Nfl.com, Nordstrom
- Office depot, overstock, orbitz
- Pandora, photobucket, pizza hut
- Qvc, quotes, quotes about life
- Realtor.com, reverse phone lookup radio shack
- Southwest airlines, sears, skype
- Target, tiger woods, twitter
- Usps, ups, united airlines
- Verizon wireless, Victoria secret, Verizon
- Walmart, weather, Wikipedia
- Xbox360, xm radio, xbox live
- Youtube, yahoo, yahoo mail
- Zillow, zappos, zip codes
Bing.com US Results
- Aol, amazon, amazon.com
- Bing, Bank of America, Best Buy
- Craigslist, CNN, Comcast.net
- Dictionary, Disney channel, dictionary.com
- Ebay, espn, expedia
- Facebook, facebook.com, fox news
- Google, gmail. Gmail.com
- Hotmail, hi5, home depot
- Irs.gov, itunes, imdb
- Jcpenney, juno, java
- Kohls, Kelly blue book, kmart
- Lowes, lyrics, limewire
- Myspace, mapquest, myspace.com
- Netflix, nascar, noaa
- Orbitz, office depot, orkut
- Pogo, Pandora, pogo.com
- Qvc, qvc.com, quotes
- Realtor.com, runescape, recipes
- Southwest airlines, sears, sam’s club
- Target, tmz, twitter
- Utube, usps, us bank
- Verizon wireless, Verizon central, Verizon.net
- www.google.com, walmart, weather
- xm radio, xbox, x17
- yahoo, youtube, yahoo.com
- zip codes, zillow, zillow.com
So far so similar although there are results that vary across both search engines. You can rank these results so that you score a point to the search engine that offers the most useful result (i.e. Bing’s: Dictionary, Disney channel, dictionary.com is beaten by Google’s: Dictionary, Disney channel, delta airlines as Google offers three sites to go to rather than Bing’s two). In this instance, we scored Bing 10 points, and Google 10 points. A draw.
Where Google totally and utterly beats Bing into oblivion however is when you look at countries outside the US. Bing doesn’t even try. Literally, it doesn’t even attempt to offer country specific results. None at all.
We already looked at a few country by country variations in Google autocomplete results in an earlier post here. Here we found that Google thinks Brits are obsessed by the weather, Indians with cricket and sex, and surprisingly the French were more interested in dot coms than the Americans.
You can see for yourself at this post.
This is the reason we thought it would be interesting to look at Bing’s suggestions. It was not at all. Quite simply, Bing offers the same suggestions for any country you go to.
If you are looking in India, China, Portugual, Mexico, Germany you will either get this list:
- Aol, amazon, amazon.com
- Bing, Bank of America, Best Buy
- Craigslist, CNN, Comcast.net
- Dictionary, Disney channel, dictionary.com
- Ebay, espn, expedia
- Facebook, facebook.com, fox news
- Google, gmail. Gmail.com
- Hotmail, hi5, home depot
- Irs.gov, itunes, imdb
- Jcpenney, juno, java
- Kohls, Kelly blue book, kmart
- Lowes, lyrics, limewire
- Myspace, mapquest, myspace.com
- Netflix, nascar, noaa
- Orbitz, office depot, orkut
- Pogo, Pandora, pogo.com
- Qvc, qvc.com, quotes
- Realtor.com, runescape, recipes
- Southwest airlines, sears, sam’s club
- Target, tmz, twitter
- Utube, usps, us bank
- Verizon wireless, Verizon central, Verizon.net
- www.google.com, walmart, weather
- xm radio, xbox, x17
- yahoo, youtube, yahoo.com
- zip codes, zillow, zillow.com
(Clue, it is the same list as the list you see in the US), or you will get nothing.
Bing seems to be doing a pretty good job of offering search capability to the consumers of the US. It looks like Bing has a fair way to go to be able to capture, organise and present the data they have before it becomes useful to countries fortunate enough not to be the US.
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You can follow me on twitter.
What do you expect? Google has 17,000 employees devoted to a business built around search.
Bing is a profit-losing experiment at an operating system and productivity software company, part of a small division separated by several management levels from the top.
Portugual->Portugal, thanks for reminding of us!
nexneo: Bing india maps are obsolete. In some cases showing 30 year old data. Entire cities are not on maps.
enjo: They’re competing for the most lucrative advertising market (by far). Why is that surprising or even bad business?
_delirium: It might not be a terrible strategy overall. Bing is the least unsuccessful Microsoft foray into the web so far, and it’s heavily built around a combination of: advertising the site, having tie-ins to things like Bing Shopping, and cutting default-search-engine deals. It’s probably easier to do all that by focusing on one country or region at a time.
pierrefar: An autocomplete list is automatically generated, so doing it on a by-country basis should not be that hard. The big time investment is doing it for one country, and I imagine rolling it to analyze other countries’ data is straightforward.
Towle_: Bing must use this plan of attack. It’s by far the smartest approach (of those I can think of, anyway). Hear me out:
Bing’s presumed goal: overtake Google on a global scale, right? At first glance, it may look like they’re ignoring the world outside the U.S., but that isn’t the case. They’re just biding their time. (Pulling an Onyx, if you will.)
Why not just take on Google all over the globe to begin with? I can think of a couple reasons:
1. They might not know how. Microsoft and Google are both American companies with mostly American employees, so they may seem like they’re on equal footing to compete both within the U.S. and abroad, but Google has years and years more experience in trying to solve the international puzzle. Bing can’t compete with that yet, and they know it.
2.a) If you know you can’t compete, DON’T. If Bing were to launch a global attack on Google right off the bat, they’d essentially be diverting troops from a (perhaps) winnable battle in the U.S. in order to fight an extremely uphill battle everywhere else, a battle they know they’ll lose initially.
Both of those would be very harsh realities for Bing to face. Too harsh.
2.b) Bing needs to give themselves the best possible chance to win in the U.S. because it’s by far their best chance at both initial and longer-term success. You can’t win a global war if you can’t win a battle in your backyard.
2.c) But perhaps even more importantly, Bing knows how badly they’ll lose in international markets at this stage in their development of their search technology, the vast majority of which has been developed by Americans, for Americans. If they make a truly concerted effort anywhere else and still get their asses kicked, it’s far worse for their future international prospects than losing before they start trying. Were Bing to devote a ton of manpower and resources to say, Brazil, and still lose to Google there, it’d be an asskicking PLUS press coverage, the latter of which would risk turning potential Brazilian users off to a future, much-improved, “Brazilian” Bing.
Conclusion: Bing’s optimal international strategy right now… is to lack one entirely. Bide time. Devote all your manpower and resources to fight over the American market for now. Improve your search technology until you can legitimately compete with Google at home. Then, once you can do that, optimize your search technology for a few key international markets. Thanks to your success in the U.S., you’ll be better able to give Google a serious run for their money in whichever markets you choose to take a stab at. Rinse and repeat.
therockhead: This is not the first time MS have focused on their home market, for example Zune HD and the music subscription service is still not available in Europe.
marklittlewood: Has this been a successful strategy?
mcav: Would it have been more successful if they had fragmented their efforts further?
DarrenH: Extraordinary. You would think that Microsoft would be able to offer some insight and value beyond a pretty anodyne list of companies from the US. The lists in the links to Google autocomplete suggestions by country offer a great insight into the psyche of different nations. I am left with the impression that contrary to my expectations, American Googlers are far more boring and predictable than those in other countries.
rauljara: Are you from America? If so, it would make sense that you would find people from the culture with which you are more familiar would also be the most boring. I imagine an Indian would be similarly bored to discover that many Indians search for information about cricket.