Google comes in second behind Bing in effectiveness study

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

[informationweek.com...]

While Google may control the lion's share of the search market, queries made through Microsoft's Bing search engine lead users to click on a Web page at a significantly higher rate than queries made through Google, according to data released Thursday.

Is Google so busy trying to add new features that they are making Google users hesitant to click anything they don't recognize?

The success rate for Bing searches in the U.S. in July was 80.04%, compared to 67.56% for Google, according to Experian Hitwise.

That's a significant percentage difference.

[aristotle]

I'm not sure how to interpret this. Could it mean that Google searchers are more likely to click on ads instead of organic results?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Ads are certainly part of it, Google often places three large ads above results. It's probably also partly due to the maps, places, shopping offers etc that are often placed ahead of real results too.

While financially rewarding to Google they should be alarmed that only two thirds of their users actually find and visit a website. They ARE a search engine despite everything else they try to be.

I would tattoo 'Google' on my shoulder if they would get rid of places, shopping and maps from serps. It will never happen.

[1script]

Oftentimes the answer I'm looking for on Google is right there in the snippet. No reason to even click on the link, I got all I was looking for right from Google.
So, for us webmasters the challenge is to create a description that's enticing enough to click yet does not provide the exact answer. And then watch Google build their own snippet of our page that gives away that answer and saves their user one click...

[londrum]

from the article:

The market watcher defines "success rate" as the percentage of search queries that result in a visit to a website.

im guessing that google doesnt consider that a "success" anymore. they are trying more and more to keep people on their own site, so i dont suppose they are that worried by the numbers.

[AlyssaS]

It's always been like this. All it means is that Google gets a lot of rank trackers and other scrapers, doing queries but not actually clicking on anything. Add in anxious webmasters doing manual queries to check where they are and you have a lot of activity on G that has nothing to do with search. People don't really check their Bing rankings in the same way.

Then people also use G for non search stuff - eg to get correct spellings (if I'm writing I often do a search for that reason - no need to click, the answer is displayed on the serps itself).

[deadsea]

Another thing that may contribute is Bing's reliance on big brands. I used Bing for a month. One of the things I hated about it was that the brand website alway come first, even if the query was qualified with terms not on the brand's website. For example if I wanted a "large hex screw" that fits a "widget" I would search for "widget large hex screw". Bing would almost always return widget.com even if it didn't have anything about screws at all on it. But I would always have to click to see. On Google, it is apparent that nobody makes large hex screws for widgets.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Google also has a dictionary (define $keyword)

It's also popular for spell checking, as AlyssaS says... ala 'did you mean'. Both require no click throughs.

Perhaps with all the instant/auto suggests there's some accidental clicking around too. Happens to me now and again.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

All plausible, but whatever the reason Google isn't sending visitors on to a website nearly as often as Bing. Considering they are essentially scraping all of the data in their rankings that's still significant imo.

[ken_b]

Oftentimes the answer I'm looking for on Google is right there in the snippet. No reason to even click on the link, I got all I was looking for right from Google.

That's my recent experience too. Pretty amazing actually.

It also seems to me that very recently I seem to be having a LOT more success with "quoted" queries compared to not long ago, still not as good as longer ago though. Might just be my perception though.

[mrguy]

That's my recent experience too. Pretty amazing actually.

It also seems to me that very recently I seem to be having a LOT more success with "quoted" queries compared to not long ago, still not as good as longer ago though. Might just be my perception though.

That works well for Google's plan of keeping people on Google. Not so well for those who create websites to get people to come to their websites.

Personally, I don't create websites for the sake of giving Google more data to use so they can make more money by people staying on Google. I want the visitors to come to my website.

That's what the Internet is all about, not keeping people on Google so they can have more chances of you clicking an ad.

[Rlilly]

@mrguy If they keep people are Google longer, they more likely to click on an ad.

We are an online store, what is more important than clicks from SE, is the demographics of those clicking and conversions to sales. In our niche Google is ahead.

[EvilSaint]

Great to see Bing coming in strong. Hopefully this is the first sign of things to come from Microsoft :)

Google has been trying to cut out website owners from the receiving end of traffic and are too absorbed with keeping visitors on their own pages. Not a great move G.