Microsoft Believes Bing is Now As Good As Google

[engine]

Microsoft Believes Bing is Now As Good As Google [wired.com]

For good reason, Google has a reputation for using this sort of distributed computing system to reach new heights on the web. But Harry Shum, who oversees research and development for Microsoft’s Bing search engine, believes his company has now matched Google’s ability to build software platforms that can harness the power of tens of thousands of servers.

“What Caffeine is good at is freshness — how quickly you can crawl, index and serve documents,” Shum tells Wired. “This is something that we take very, very seriously [at Microsoft]. If you look at the freshness of our queries, I hope you feel that Bing’s freshness — search quality in terms of freshness — is at least on par with Google. And, yes, it all starts with the infrastructure.”

but Shum believes that Bing has finally reached a point where it can compete with Google on a technical level.

[jmccormac]

Delusional. Utterly delusional! How many years ago was Google's Caffeine update?

Regards...jmcc

[Quadrille]

BillyS:

I'm thinking you don't rank well on Bing, do you?

I'm thinking that you can't read (see my post), and I'm dam' sure you've been caught out by Google ;)

[edited by: mack at 6:12 pm (utc) on Mar 12, 2012]
[edit reason] See sticky [/edit]

[nickreynolds]

Maybe its just familiarity but I just can't drag myself away from Google search - I just find the results page (even with it's ads and clutter!), is cleaner and clearer than the others.

[DirigoDev]

I believe what Shum is saying. MS has matched Google’s ability to build software platforms that can harness the power of thousands of servers. Was there ever any doubt that they could do this? Not in my mind. MS’s primary business is operating systems.

Can they build a better SERP without copying Google? Can they get enough market share to make us care about Bing? Google gained .2% last month, Yahoo lost .3%, and MS gained .1%. Being as good as Google is not relevant. Market share wins the day.

<offtopic>I see chatter in this thread about what webmasters like and don’t like about the SERPs interface on Bing and Google. Why have the search engines not let users pick their SERPs style or template from 5-10 pre-defined SERP designs? Same goes for search page itself. Not like iGoogle. Just clean interfaces for different style users (text only, instant vs no-instant...). Seems like it would be an easy upgrade (do it like the Google mobile browser: [google.com...]

[jmccormac]

Of course the real test will be if when you type "Bing" into the Bing search box, it breaks the internet. [1] :)

Regards...jmcc
ObRef: The IT Crowd

[dhaliwal]

traffic from bing is slowly going up. i guess they should see higher search share in coming quarters.

[incrediBILL]

It's pretty sad when the day comes we're rooting for MS to dominate something again.

I wish more people did use Bing because I still dominate Bing listings just like I dominated Google before Panda turned my rankings into a pile of eucalyptus droppings.

MS needs to corner some serious marketshare to make it happen and I don't see them reclaiming the smart phones or tablets any time soon, or ever, and they're losing browser share as fast as they can go.

I think their only hope would be to dominate social media by being the integral search in Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. for everyone to use, and get Google blocked from access, but I'm not thinking that's going to happen either. Think about it, if you could only find social results for the big sites in Bing, it would be a major coup for Bing. They just aren't smart enough to realize they should give it away to the social sites before it's too late.

[J_RaD]

and they're losing browser share as fast as they can go.

hahhahahh, oh yes yes IE is just bleeeeeeeeeeeeding market share.

[Quadrille]

If yo look at the browser market where people have a choice, then IE hasn't got a lot more to lose.

The IE market share now is dominated by 'fleet sales' - installation by business and government, who like the docility of IE, and the boring nature of outlook.

Sooner or later (always later than individuals with brains), the institutions will wise up and follow everyone else.
... away from IE.

[TinkyWinky]

If MS actually can get this right, then (in the UK at least) the only thing they will have to win over is all the thicko newsreaders and journos that still think it's cool to 'Google it'.

FFS wake up and smell the coffee people... have you read the new "and improved for G" privacy policy recently...

Ok so it's no better or worse than MS's but at least users would then have more of choice where to sell their 'search' soul... and everyone woudl have a better playing field where we might start to get more innovation out of the top 2...

TW

[Quadrille]

Oh, Pu-lease. Will you just listen to yourself.

This whole thread follows Bing saying Bing is great - if Starbucks had said Starbucks is great you'd all be screaming "Spam! Advert! Prove it! Says WHO?"

But because Google has rumbled you, and Bing is your new best friend (until they rumble you, too!), you all dive in and take a self-advertising proclamation as objective evidence.

Google is much, much better than Bing, by all independent, objective milestones - and if you bothered to read the M$ blurb, they weren't even CLAIMING to be as good as Google - they simply claimed they were getting there. And, of course, let's not forget that Google is particularly good at weeding out second-rate SEO :)

If this is what you guys think is serious SEO, then no wonder I get your clients when Google bans them.

See ya; I'll leave you to your Bing Worship ... as long as it lasts. Yes, I'll probably get banned for my honesty - that got me blackballed here before. But I'll go quietly into the night ... ;)

[J_RaD]

^ have you ever run a high volume adwords account?

[mack]

When you use Google you get into the Google way of thinking. The results are what you expect. Because of this when you use Bing the results seam strange. If however you switch to using Bing for your regular searches (as I did) the results are actually very good. Its when you go back to Google the results appear terrible.

Mack.

[anshul]

For me, G looks better in UI and ease of use but I appreciate full-screen wallpaper of Bing.

[Tropical Island]

Here is a post I just put in the Webmaster General forum:

Why would anyone want to use Bing.
It's a disaster.

We changed our business model in March 2009.
We changed all the copy, title, description, keywords, etc. and yet in March, 2012 Bing is still showing the old information.
Google had the changes up & running in days.

Reminds me of AltaVista in 2000.

The ads they are showing are totally irrelevant to the query.

Like I said a disaster. I find it hard to believe they have 15%. Certainly not from my site statistics.

[ByronM]

Google is much, much better than Bing, by all independent, objective milestones

Says who? :)

I prefer bing over google any day, and I absolutely love the new SERP design that has been in rotation, can't wait to see what they land on.

personally, I gave up on Google when they gave up on me.. After a rather cataclysmic google checkout fiasco and the massive improvements in bing, I haven't thought twice nor looked back.

[ByronM]

We changed our business model in March 2009.
We changed all the copy, title, description, keywords, etc. and yet in March, 2012 Bing is still showing the old information.
Google had the changes up & running in days.

Maybe you're still doing something wrong or your site isn't relevant to bing's core users?

Bing has a rather robust internal travel sight and they're not afraid of focusing on destination sites either.. Have you ever.. ahem.. Emailed bing? They do answer emails :)

[J_RaD]

they also answer a phone as well :-O

[Tropical Island]

"Maybe you're still doing something wrong or your site isn't relevant to bing's core users? "

We show up just fine in Bing - that's not the problem.

The problem is that Bing is not updating relevant information after 3 YEARS!

That's the problem. What good would a phone call do if they are not spidering sites with hundreds of back links & updating the info.

This is what happened to Alta Vista - they just left old info in their search results or lost 50% of them.

No matter how much in denial some of you are Bing is a dead horse.

[Meditrans]

I don't think so.Microsoft only think like that.Its nothing better than google in bing except the image search..

[jmccormac]

Bing has a major problem with crawling content. It isn't as "good" as Google because Google has dumbed down its search engine quality over the last few years.

Regards...jmcc