Amid a large TV campaign, BingItOn.com is working to prove that ‘Bing.com’ is worth much more than it’s all time high of 16.7%, which pales in comparison to Google’s mighty 67.5%. A tall order indeed. (apparently in an impartial test, 52% of users preferred Bing)
I played around with BingItOn.com today to figure out which search engine is indeed best for me. Our SEO firm relies entirely on marketing businesses through Google, but we still put focus on Yahoo and Bing, so I kept my impartial hat on. I have to admit though, no client ever calls us asking if we can get them to the top of Bing, so I wanted to see if the advertising campaign stood to good measure. The results were interesting.
My five topics were something I have interest in, from a local point of view and a national perspective. I chose the following:
- SEO Firms (obviously)
- Hair Salons in New York (because I’m in New York occasionally)
- Dentists in San Diego (don’t we all love our pearly whites?)
- Italian Restaurant in San Diego (who doesn’t?)
- Brunch San Diego (who doesn’t?)
I typed in one of my keywords (Brunch San Diego), I was taken to a split screen; shown here.
Can you guess which is which? I immediately knew, but alas, I remained impartial. I chose the right side. Ding ding – result time.
I chose – Google. What was interesting though, is Bing definitely delivers a less crowded environment. I’ll talk later how I don’t like their dated layout, but my eyes did move to Bing first because of their simplicity. I would soon realize though, the results weren’t favorable.
In some instances, Google gave more of a complex screen, with too much choice. Pictures here, photographs there, maps here, profiles there, it was quite overloading.
But, Bing has a problem. They seem to be relying heavily on things like Yellow Pages and CitySearch in their results, (I saw both appear on all five searches) two portals I would not want to click on when searching for something. Bing maps also leaves something to be desired, it needs dragging into the 21st century.
Near the end, it was neck and neck. So what made me choose one more over Bing? It was simply the relevancy. Both sets of results did have a lot in common, (I.e Yelp was very apparent on both pages) but Google gave me a list of immediate results in my vicinity, whilst Bing wanted me to venture through another portal, to almost do my search again.
I get that the above probably seems like a huge contradiction. Sometimes Google overloads with information, but I love the local listings. I don’t like Bing’s results, but sometimes it looked simpler.
The only way to finally tell, was to try each engine out of the BingItOn site. So in my final impartial test – I went to Bing.com and Google.com and looked at my user experience.
What’s missing (of course) from BingItOn.com are the added extras, both engines were awash with ads, more map results and other segments. Bing’s problem? I’ll say it again, it looks dated and returns dated results. It’s landing page shows exciting and beautiful scenery, but it doesn’t transcend into it’s search engine and even when there, I feel I have to venture to another portal to then do more research. Google on the other hand, whilst it sometimes gives you too much information – presents a more refined, professional layout with results that I feel are more researched.
Bing it on?
I came, I searched, I Googled.
Try BingItOn for yourself. The official results of their national test are here
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