Search Engine Showdown: Google Vs. Bing

Over the years Google has been synonymous with search, and Bing – poor Bing – has quickly become synonymous with sarcasm about why anyone would use Bing. Believe it or not, these two search engines are not as different as you joke.

We’ve talked about Bing’s greatest strengths before, but people often ignore the fact that Bing does many things as well as Google. It is better? Probably not, but I decided to give them a real side-by-side comparison to see how they stack up.

Applicants

You are probably already familiar with two search engines, but to remind you, here’s what we’re talking about:

• Google : The most used search engine in the world, Google has been around since 1997 and is constantly being improved with new smart results, enhanced features and integration with other Google products. As of February of this year, the share of Google now accounts for 64.5% share of the US search market .
• Bing : Bing is the latest name for Microsoft’s search engine, formerly Windows Live Search and MSN Search. Bing bills itself as a “decision-making engine” that seeks to present results in more real-life context than just searching for text on a page. Bing also supports Yahoo search, which together with Bing serves 32.6% of Internet users in the United States.

Basic layout and search functions

Both sites look and feel surprisingly similar when it comes to basic search results. In fact, with the exception of the font and logo at the top of the page, it would be easy to confuse one with the other. Here are the main differences that I noticed after getting to know each of them:

• Bing’s video search is significantly better than Google’s. This is the biggest difference between the two (and why Bing has a reputation as a “porn search engine”). Instead of giving you a vertical video list with small thumbnails, it gives you a grid of large thumbnails that you can click to play without leaving Bing. For some videos, it will even give you a preview if you hover over.
• Bing offers more autocomplete options than Google in most cases. Google only gives four and Bing gives eight. This is especially useful if you are using autocomplete to search for alternative products or get wildcard suggestions .
• Google Shopping Suggestions appear more frequently than Bing Suggestions, and overall they are much better. So if you’re trying to find out which stores sell a particular product or where to find the best price on the Internet, Google is better than Bing.
• Google’s image search interface seems a little smoother when you’re using it, although Bing has one or two additional options like Layout (which allows you to search for portrait or landscape images). Bing Image Search also allows you to remove certain parts of your search query with a single click, which is kind of cool (I wish it would do that for all searches).
• Bing places related searches and similar image searches to the right of the search results, while Google places them at the bottom. This is not really good or bad; it’s just a difference.

Bing has also taken over many of Google’s “smart searches” such as movie times, unit conversions, local weather, famous people, and the like. Most of these things are very similar, although Google has some that Bing lacks, such as health information and release dates for movies and video games. If you rely on smart search, choose Google. (One exception: if you’re looking for flights, Bing has an interesting feature that predicts if ticket prices will go up or down .)

Advanced features and interesting stuff

Surprisingly, the two engines are quite comparable when it comes to experienced operators. The syntax for each might be slightly different ( here’s a list of Google extended operators and here’s a Bing list ), but there are many overlaps. However, Google has more and will be better for advanced searches, with the exception of two searches that only Bing can perform:

• contains: which allows you to search for pages that contain files of a specific type (e.g. PDF). On Google, this will only take you to the PDFs themselves, but on Bing, it will provide you with pages containing links to PDFs that might be useful.
• linkfromdomain: Shows the pages with the most linkfromdomain: that are linked from a specific site (for example, the best sites Lifehacker links to on a specific topic).
• feed: which allows you to search for rss feeds on a specific topic.

Google also has a few extra niceties built into its search, such as reverse image search ( which is incredible ), instant search (which shows results as you type), voice search (which allows you to search using a microphone) and – of course – integration with Google services such as Gmail, Google Now, and Google Contacts. If you use a lot of Google content, it’s hard to ever give up on a search.

Bing Rewards is also worth mentioning: if you sign up for this handy service, you can accumulate points for every search you perform on Bing, which can eventually be redeemed for Amazon, Starbucks, GameStop gift cards, or even donated to your account. favorite charity.

Finally, this is a small niggle, but interesting: if you search for a particular site on Google , it will not show you any information from the Knowledge Network. Bing will be.

Quality of search results

Now we come to what really matters: the actual search results. None of the above features really matter if one site doesn’t give you what you’re looking for.

In terms of basic search, I found that both engines, even though they displayed different results, usually gave me what I wanted. One search might be slightly better on Bing (” raspberry pi “), while another might be better on Google (” avengers age of ultron “), but overall, none of them gave terribly bad or very different results. I was surprised to find that Bing did better on some, but only to a moderate extent.

The real differences are when looking for something really specific, such as technical problems (” project64 mario kart too fast “). If the answer to your question is hidden somewhere in a large forum or blog, Google will probably do its best to find it and organize the results. And the more specific the question is, the more Google benefits.

Winner: Google (but less than you think)

I don’t think it will surprise anyone that objectively Google is the best search engine. It has been around for the longest, it is by far the most popular and it is constantly being improved. I was surprised at how similar the two search engines are in terms of functionality. Bing even makes some things better , like videos. But while I have sometimes preferred Bing results over Google for general searches, Google’s ability to scoop information from the darkest corners of the Internet is simply too valuable. This is a closer challenge than I expected, but Google is still the best search engine.

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