Bing is more accurate than Google, report shows. Does it matter?
Bing, the search engine launched by Microsoft way back in 2009, reliably lags behind Google on the search leaderboard. In July, for instance, comScore said 14.4 percent of the US market belonged to Bing, compared to 65.1 percent at Google. But according to the analytics firm Experian Hitwise, Bing may actually be a more accurate platform than its much-more established competitor.
In a report released this week, Experian Hitwise said that Bing and Yahoo search had the "highest success rates" of all search engines, meaning in this case that more people clicked through to a search result on Bing and Yahoo than they did on Google. The numbers break down like this: Roughly 68 percent of users plugged a term into Google, and then visited one of the websites that Google suggested.
On Yahoo, on the other hand, more than 81.36 percent of searches were "successful," and on Bing, the figure is roughly 80 percent.
As Paul McDougall notes over at Information Week, the report is exceptionally good news indeed for the ad team over at Microsoft. "The numbers could help Microsoft boost its revenue from online services, as they show marketers that keywords purchased on Bing-powered sites have a better click-through rate than those purchased on Google," McDougall writes.
He's right, of course. Still, it's hard to imagine that Bing and Yahoo – no matter what kind of accuracy rates are attributed to either site – will be able to topple Google anytime soon. "This is a long-term game for Bing and Bing continues to be focused on creating a great consumer experience, solid execution and steady market share growth," Stefan Weitz, director of Bing, admitted to tech site CRN this month.
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