On the eve of the first of the U.S. presidential debates, millions of people are expected to tune in. In anticipation of this great debate, we thought the time was right to update you on the early results from another debate we think is worth caring about — the debate over who provides better Web search results – Bing or Google.
A few weeks ago we created the Bing It On Challenge to make it easy for you to compare the Web search results from Bing and Google. Our goal with the Bing It On Challenge is to contrast the habitual use of Google with research showing that people chose Bing’s Web search results over Google’s nearly 2:1 in blind comparison tests.**
Since launching the Bing it On Challenge, we have had over five million visits to it, far exceeding our own projections. And the number of visits continues to rise steadily.
To learn firsthand what people thought about the Challenge and Bing, we asked our independent research partner, Answers Research, to field a survey* with approximately 4,700 people. We asked for people’s impressions of Bing before taking the Challenge and then after they completed it. What we found was 64% of people were surprised by the quality of Bing’s web search results. Over half of the people surveyed indicated their impression of Bing improved after seeing Bing’s web search results next to Google’s. Additionally, of people who identified Google as their primary search engine, 33% said they would use Bing more often after taking the Challenge and 17% who found Bing more favorable after taking the side-by-side comparison said it revealed flaws in Google’s results.
Of course, the “Google habit” is strong in many people and habits don’t change overnight.
We are working very hard to continue improving the quality of our results (from web search to adding new useful information from your social networks), and to make the distinctions between Bing and Google clear so you can make an informed choice. This campaign is just the start.
If you haven’t taken the Bing It On Challenge yet, join the more than 5 million who have come to bingiton.com and see what you have been missing. Simply go to bingiton.com and take the Challenge and join the conversation at #bingiton.
Mike Nichols
Corporate Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Bing
*Study conducted by Answers Research across 4706 web surveys. Results were weighted to the US Online Population using age, gender and income. Microsoft was not identified as the sponsor. Google primary users were self-stated.
**Based on a comparison of web search results pane only; excludes ads, Bing’s Snapshot and Social Search panes and Google’s Knowledge Graph. Learn more at bingiton.com.