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.

[Quadrille]

"Bing has finally reached a point where it can compete with Google on a technical level."

Piffle.

[J_RaD]

one could say its better then goog now they've added so much other garbage into their results.

Bing is clean, where goog is looking like a mess.

googs privacy policy alone is enough of a reason not to use it.

[graeme_p]

I am so glad to finally get an unbiased opinion on Bing vs Google!

How is MS's privacy policy better than Google's? Both share your info across their sites, neither sells it to third parties or shares it without consent. The big change in what Google does is (as usual) what MS did all along.

[J_RaD]

bing dumps your search data after x amount of months, goog keeps it forever.

if you happen to also use googs email service and do something simple like.. delete your messsages, while you might think they are gone they aren't.. goog is holding them FOREVER.

[Gibble]

J_RaD, do you <b>really</b> think MS actually permanently deletes your data after x months?

[m0thman]

Excellent.. I've just found a really good "Friday Funny" to send around to friends. I'm still creased up laughing here!

[flatfile]

LOL, until they start sending me traffic. They'll remain no good to me.

[4serendipity]

LOL, until they start sending me traffic. They'll remain no good to me.

That really is what it all boils down to. Just like when google was technically superior to other engines, but didn't produce much traffic for the first coupe years of its existence

[zeus]

Bing is getting better no doubt, I also use it more and more, it is pure search results which is not stuffed with videos, news,images....

Now Bing should grab the chance and say we just keep data for 3 Month, not given to 3erd parties... just a clean good privacy Policy

Bing also show images at top when you do a image related search and place some kind of editors chose results, those things have to go.

Also I would like that, when I type bing.com I then get to the US version and bing.co.uk I get to the UK Version....., not like now, where you have to change settings every time, when cookies are deleted, it really suck.

[graeme_p]

@ J_RaD I cannot find the bit in the MS privacy statement about deleting you data. Can you point me to it?

[celgins]

Whether Bing can compete with Google on a technical level is up for debate. If they say their server farms, software platforms and indexing is as good as Google's, it should be fairly easy to test.

But from a user standpoint, Bing is probably just as good (or better) than Google. The average user uses Google and/or Bing to search the Internet. The more relevant the search results, the happier the user. And from what I have seen, Bing's results are no worse than Google's.

We shouldn't think about this from a webmaster or SEO perspective. Webmasters may not like hearing it, but neither Google nor Bing sees webmasters and SEOs their primary concern. The average user is what concerns them. How much traffic they send you, or whether or not their ad-serving matches your page content perfectly comes second.

The bigger issue for Microsoft's Bing (and other search engines) is that Google has become synonymous with search. The phrase "Google it" is akin to the phrase "Xerox it," or other phrases that associate a business with a process. Google has held that position for years, and it will be difficult for another search engine to dislodge that association from the minds of average users.

[Gibble]

We shouldn't think about this from a webmaster or SEO perspective. Webmasters may not like hearing it, but neither Google nor Bing sees webmasters and SEOs their primary concern. The average user is what concerns them. How much traffic they send you, or whether or not their ad-serving matches your page content perfectly comes second.

And that is why Images, Videos, Maps, etc results will be included by google, bing, and any other search engine. Because as a regular user, just surfing for information, they want that.

Personally, if I search for "Planted Aquarium" I want images and articles. Images and Videos for inspiration and articles for how to set it up. I as the average user, won't want to toggle between strictly image search, strictly video search, strictly site search to get all the information I want.

[freelistfool]

It isn't that Bing is getting that much better. What's happening is that Google is getting worse. For most of the keywords that I follow Google and Bing return about the same results on the first page but in a slightly different order. Before panda Google clearly gave a better result set.

The bigger issue for Microsoft's Bing (and other search engines) is that Google has become synonymous with search.

I'd go so far as to say Google has become synonymous with the internet for most people. The very first search term people type into in bing is probably "google".

[Quadrille]

Frankly, who cares that they keep the data? Google has always been up front, and the challenges are 'politically correct' privacy issues, not real world issues.

Unlike many - particularly facebook, but M$ has been implicated in the past - Google uses aggregated data, and does not sell personal info to third parties.

It is no coincidence that FB's PR comany - Burston Marsteller - was caught briefing against Google's harmless data gathering, as FB sell your very soul to any advertisers who smiles at them.

No one who knows anything about aggregated data (and it matters for SEO) should wear a pointy tin-foil hat in these forums. It marks you out as 'credulous as hell'

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Glad to hear Bing has some uber servers, now lets see some faster indexing and more frequent crawling and updating. It's taking up to 6 months for page changes to propagate with Bing when Google has the changes updated within 6 hours.

Flex your newfound muscles big B. You just took away your last excuse not to :p

[Panthro]

Interesting article. I wonder if some of the tech talked about explains a little bit of the fluctuation a lot of webmasters around here are claiming to see lately.

Thanks for posting!

[BillyS]

It isn't that Bing is getting that much better. What's happening is that Google is getting worse.

Agree... sort of. Bing has gotten better and Google is struggling right now. At this point, Bing is as good as Google (<-never thought I'd say that... and I own shares of Microsoft).

[ken_b]

For me, Bing/hoo is "Good enough" most of the time.

Good enough that I've taken G off my search list on FireFox.

Somehow I figured out how to type "Google.com" into my address bar if I really, really, need another opinion. :)

.

[J_RaD]

@ J_RaD I cannot find the bit in the MS privacy statement about deleting you data. Can you point me to it?

i'll do some digging and find it for you.

I also remember watching a long interview and part of it was pointing out how goog does some dirty thing and how bing does not.

such as only dropping partial IP.. where as MS will dump the whole IP, etc etc etc.

[Web_speed]

For me, Bing/hoo is "Good enough" most of the time.

Good enough that I've taken G off my search list on FireFox.

Somehow I figured out how to type "Google.com" into my address bar if I really, really, need another opinion. :)

+1

Removed everything Google from my systems. As well as any system i get to work on or upgrade/repair. Replaced by Bing on all. With their latest privacy policy i consider anything Google a security risk and a major breach of privacy laws.

I cant always find what I am looking for on maybe 6% of searches due to Bing's lack of coverage and indexing speed but searches are good enough in 94% of times. Excellent as far as I'm concerned.

IMO, Microsoft should start changing direction and invest heavily in search and other popular internet properties. PCs are fast becoming dinosaurs and so will Microsoft unless they start taking this frontier more seriously.
They really need to hurry up now... A great shortcut for them would be to offer webmasters an Adsense equivalent (as well as custom site search boxes), bing can quickly become an household name and make Google look like an old dated sl#t once they do that...

[J_RaD]

PCs are fast becoming dinosaurs and so will Microsoft unless they start taking this frontier more seriously.

they sure are selling like hotcakes

[Web_speed]

they sure are selling like hotcakes

Looking at my logs for more then a dozen websites that i currently manage i see a fast raise of mobile devices (non Microsoft ops) growing strong month by month. Lots and lots of iPhones iTabs & Andorieds (phones/tablets/etc)... the numbers are becoming seriously substantial. Way too many androids for my like in particular... and growing. I don't like what I'm seeing!

Androied is becoming main stream fast, not too long now before a free PC version is available and probably take off.

And to those who are not sure what all of this means:
Androied = 100% Google every-f^%$^ing-where

[martinibuster]

I increasingly use Bing in my everyday searching to find information because Google occasionally reinteprets my searches and displays results for things Google thinks I want to see but in fact I am not interested in. Google is increasingly frustrating to use. Bing shows me what I'm looking for.

[LostOne]

Bing for real information. You know, the older (pre 2002) hobby type sites whose information is far better than big brands or fluff. Goog if I want a price or shopping for something. Naturally the latter isn't very frequent.

[Quadrille]

If you seriously believe Bing is better, then go for it.

If you think Bing is better because they show your site better, you'd probably do well to stick with Google.

As for me, I'll stick with Google - proudly - until Bing is REALLY better :)

As for how my sites appear on Bing, compared with Google? Never looked. And probably won't until I've had at least ten Bing searches that were more useful than Google.

2 years? probably :)

[loner]

I'm not sure Bing is better because I don't use the Goo except for 5% of my searches, so there is no reasonably fair comparison. I've noticed over the last two years since I've used Bing I don't feel as if I'm being intruded upon, pressured, or manipulated like I do in the Goo.

[albo]

Hear, hear, @Web_speed. I'm still tied to Gmail, though, until M$ gets off its fat hiney and makes an iPad-friendlier Hotmail. (I got an email from the Hotmail team which, upon opening, prompted me to seek another browser—presumably, IE.) My host does a pitiful job of spam filtering, so I feel I must resort to forwarding to one of the big two or three...

[BillyS]

As for me, I'll stick with Google - proudly - until Bing is REALLY better

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

[Rosalind]

Bing needs to add the ability to sort results by date. That's the only reason I go back to Google, otherwise it's Bing or DDG all the way.