

Bing Beats Google On Search Effectiveness - Irene
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/microsoft_news/231400134

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jhdavids8
I'd say this is largely due to the type of searches people are doing, as well
as (as some people mentioned) many finding the needed info in the blurb or
instant page of the site. For developers like us, we probably often Google a
very difficult programming question. Others Google random questions or phrases
as well, hoping Google gives the answer. Often, we don't find what we're
looking for, so we don't click on anything. I'd say a large part of those
searching in Bing are doing much simpler searches, leading to easier found
results. Those who really want to scour the web for a difficult-to-find answer
more commonly use Google than Bing, so they more commonly can't find the
answer.

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brd
I agree that the 80/20 rule probably applies to this situation.

Novice users (a larger percentage of Bing/Yahoo users) have more simple
queries and are more likely to click poor results.

Tech Savvy users (which Google owns the lion's share of) will have more
queries, more complex queries, will have a better sense of their goal in mind
and will iterate queries, and are more likely to leverage search features like
definition and calculator queries.

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Irene
Bing and Yahoo yield higher "percentage of search queries that result in a
visit to a website". I often use google's built-in calculator, flight status
and definition queries. This means I am "finding relevant information" without
finding a website. Does it make google less efficient? I do not think so.

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Jebdm
Also, I frequently find the information I'm looking for in the blurb from the
website and so don't bother to click through. (Or I view the cached version.)

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seats
Even better, sometimes google instant answers my question before I even see
search results.

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viscanti
There's hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year with people trying to
game the system and show up higher in google search results. With the amount
of money spent there, it's no wonder that some (a lot of?) worthless results
show up. Bing benefits most from not being Google. It's the classic security
by obscurity.

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brd
Is there any word on how Google instant search impacts this number? That by
itself could account for the large discrepancy.

And what about map queries? Do those get counted as queries without successful
clicks?

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kenjackson
Instant search shouldn't impact clickthrough on links. It could effect the
length of queries though (making queries shorter on average for Google).

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vladd
It would, as you make a lot of instant queries with no clickthroughs before
you end up typing your full query.

~~~
kenjackson
Oh, I see. You're saying each instant query would count as a query, rather
than the instant query "session". That makes sense.

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mc32
Here's the source of the data:

[http://www.hitwise.com/us/press-center/press-
releases/experi...](http://www.hitwise.com/us/press-center/press-
releases/experian-hitwise-reports-google-share-of-searche/)

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accoinstereo
This article doesn't say anything, as much as it tries to. Without considering
the different populations that use each search engine, the numbers are
meaningless. Get back to me when they do some proper normalization.

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ltamake
I'm not surprised. I've been getting fed up with Google more and more
regarding search. I still don't use Bing as much, but it seems nicer to use
than Google.

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imtyler
While I'm a huge fan of Google, I'm glad other companies are challenging them.
After all, competition leads to innovation.

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bdrocco
Isn't "the percentage of search queries that result in a visit to a website" a
bogus measure of success? I find myself having to follow more Bing links
because the captions are irrelevant sections of the website.

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rorrr
Every time I want to use Bing for some advanced searches, I'm lost. Like if I
want to find something within the last 24 hours, how do you do it?

