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For at least one search term, Bing works much better than Google

June 11th, 2009 · Comments

Although I’ve been critical of Microsoft in the past, I have to say that I’m somewhat impressed by Bing.

I’m a fan of the PBS “Great American Scenic Railroads ” series. I have been to the official web site (www.gsrj.com) before, but I forgot to bookmark it.

Last night, I searched “Great American Scenic Railroads” on Google. I couldn’t find the official site on the first 3 pages of the search results. In fact, I stopped browsing through the search result pages since most of the search results are online shops who sell the Great American Scenic Railroads DVDs.

For the first time in a long time, I gave up on Google. I went to Bing.com, entered the exact search keywords “Great American Scenic Railroads”.

The official web site was returned as #1 search result. That’s exactly what I was looking for.

Why is Google not showing the official site? Is it because of search engine optimization (SEO) done by all of the online sellers who’re gaming for the top spots on the search result pages?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt commented on Bing recently: “"It’s not the first entry for Microsoft. They do this about once a year.” I think Google needs to take Bing and Microsoft more seriously. Microsoft had a lot of problems over the past few years and failed many times. But, Microsoft is a very resilient company. It seems to be at its best when its back is against the wall. Remember the browser war between Netscape and Microsoft? Microsoft kept trying, and eventually got it right.

Don’t count Microsoft out yet in the search war. :-)

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Tags: Company Analysis · Innovation

Viewing 4 Comments

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    I think the search term you used is somewhat misleading. I haven't seen the series, but the website you mentions is "great scenic railway journeys" but the DVDs are "great american scenic railroads". So they are different. Putting "great scenic railway journeys" into each search engine shows the gsrj.com site as the number one hit.

    Putting "great american scenic railroads" in both engines gives a lot of CD hits, but Bing does put the gsrj.com site on the first results page, though around the 7th spot.

    I'm not a Google (or Bing) bigot, but I just wanted to point out the disparity between what you were search for and the search terms you were using. I think both engines gave pretty good results.
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    Thanks for the comments.

    When I searched for "great american scenic railroads", the gsrj.com site showed up as #1 on bing.com -- that's right after bing.com was released to public. I guess it has now fell to #7.

    I agree with your comments regarding the preciseness (or the lack of preciseness) of the search terms I used. But, I think part of the reason that gsrj.com is not showing up on top is that a lot of DVD vendors are gaming the game engines, and have their search results showing up on the top of the list. I think this is increasingly becoming a problem on google as it becomes more and more dominant in the search space. Sellers with big packets can simply spend more dollars on SEO and paid search to get their sites higher ranking on google.

    It'd be interesting to see how Google and Bing will address this issue now and in the future.
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    Google's own research has shown that users report better results when Google's brand is on MSFT's results versus MSFT"s Live Search brand on Google's results (can't a source at the moment). This indicate that a redesign and rebrand may be MSFT's best tactic to gain market share. The deals to get Bing as the default on most PC' wont' hurt things either.
    Betting against Microsoft is rarely a smart bet.
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    Thanks, Ted. I too think the new "Bing" brand is a smart move. In addition to the reason you mentioned, I think there is simply too much baggage associated with the "MSN Search" brand. Microsoft search product needs a fresh start. It'd be interesting to see if Bing can evolve into a verb -- I suppose that's the ultimate measurement of how successful Bing is.
 

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