Search Engine

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Is Google really a leader in the search engine industry? Enter Bing.

12 June 2009 in Toolkit by Tyler | View Comments

Microsoft Google! oO
Image by Daniel F. Pigatto via Flickr

In the past ten years, Google has become our e-mail service, our newspaper, our encyclopedia, our street map, and our little black book. Google is so integrated into our lives that it is treated like a verb. There is a reason why you never hear “I’m going to Lycos that.”

Being that nearly 74% of all search engine queries were performed in Google (as of 6 June, according to Hitwise data), a valid competitor entering the market not only has to perform to a certain standard, but also must differentiate itself.

Enter Microsoft’s Bing.  Launched June 3rd as a search engine competitor, StatCounter reports that Bing was the number two search engine worldwide one day later. In the US. People have been made aware of Bing, but the question is, how does Bing compare?

I spent an afternoon using Bing lined up against identical search criteria entered in Google.

Basic searches: After many random web searches, I found Google performed better in returning general search results. Not only did it prompt more terms when I began to type, but also with certain ambiguous search criteria, Google pulled what I was looking for.

For example, if “cabinet” is entered, it is not clear whether shopping and retail results or information about the US government is more relevant. At that point, the individual search engine must make an educated decision on what results to return. Based on the sheer volume of search data Google has, it knew that when I entered “cabinet,” I was looking for retail results. Google results even show local search business results for “cabinet”, based on my IP address.

If Bing increases in popularity, I expect there will be an improvement in search results because they will have a large enough database and enough search inquiries behind them to make similar educated decisions. One very helpful feature on Bing allows you to see an excerpt from the webcopy of the site without ever clicking on the link. This is very helpful as a user when determining which sites you are actually interested in visiting.

Video and Image searches: Both the image and video results on Bing have a nice interface.

The image results are displayed on one page instead of on multiple pages you have to click through. I like this feature because after four or five pages I get tired of clicking through results. The single page loads surprisingly fast, and only displays the related text when you hover the cursor over a particular image. Result? I viewed more results than I would have in Google images.

Bing’s video results also have a unique feature; if you hover the cursor over the link image of the video, it will start to play, allowing you to decide if you even want to visit that site without ever leaving Bing. Another great feature on Bing is the option to sort through video results by video, tv show, news clip or sports clip.

Mapping tools: One large drawback for me about Bing is the lack of “walking directions” and “search nearby” options within their maps application. Within Google Maps, from an established address, you can find driving or walking directions to a particular location or search for nearby establishments by type. I find this tool invaluable and I think as Bing develops, they too will have similar features.

However, mostly because Google has been working on these projects for much longer, I think Google will always be more accurate and advanced in these features.

The bottom line: Google is unsurpassed, but might face some healthy competition if Bing continues to develop innovative features while becoming more utilitarian.

Have you used Bing much since launch?  What do you think?

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SEO in Layman’s terms

4 September 2008 in Explanation by Kate | View Comments

My dad asked me the other day what SEO was (and to be clear, he didn’t use the term “SEO,” it was more of a “What do you mean I should get my company page ranking up?  What the heck does that mean??).  I then proceeded to (try to) explain the basic concept of SEO to him.

I thought the dumbed down version of it might be helpful.  It’s on the shorter side, because my dad’s needs for his company website don’t extend much further than that.  I would love for people to add their own versions or additions to other aspects of SEO if they want to.

So here it is:

“Dad.  Let’s say someone searches for your company online.  You’ll pop up (hopefully!) on the first entry.  Great, but how many people do you think are going to find you using your company name?  Those people will probably already know you and what you do.  But what if someone was looking for a product that you produce, let’s say tracer wire.  They’re going to type in “tracer wire.”  So what search engine optimization does is it makes it so your company ideally pops up on the first page, if not one of the first few entries. Most people don’t look past the first page of what a search engine gets for you, so you need to be right there, and in their face.”

“How do you do that Katie [he calls me Katie]?”

“Well, an example of what you could do is to “tag” your website, which means you associate it with key words that you think likely customers might search for.  For instance, you tag your company with “copper wire” and there’s at least a potential that you’ll pop up at the beginning of their search.

“The idea is to make your tags a good mix between both broad and narrow terms so that you remain competitive.  There are a lot of firms that might be in the “copper wire” industry, and you may get lost somewhere in the mix of so many firms.  But there are fewer firms in the cooper wire industry that make “tracer wire”.

“Another way you can give your website some juice is by linking out, or putting links on your sites to other sites.  The search engines are like little worms with many heads, and the more pathways you offer them to your site, the easier and more often they can get to you. ***[Sidenote: this worm analogy could be gross, I'll have to come up with something better for future explanations, but, oddly, it's what popped into my head at the time.... please offer your suggestions below for other analogies]*** And the more times they get to you, the closer to the top of search results you will be.

“For the same reason, it also helps to have other websites that contain links to your website.  Good opportunties might be if you work with partners that could put a link to you on their sites, or if you’re a member of an association that features member sites.  Things like that.” ***[Sidenote: as you may have gathered, my dad is not in an industry where blogging/commenting/social media is used at present, and also note, he doesn’t know how to use a computer, so there’s no chance that he will be leaving comments and his website information on any blogs, but this is another way to go about this).


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