Google vs. Bing

Google returned the most relevant result 71 percent of the time, compared with Bing at 49 percent of the time and Yahoo! 30 percent of the time.

Citigroups Mark Mahaney explains their methodology for the study:

Over the past two weeks, we conducted 200 queries across the three major Search engines"Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Most of the queries we picked came from Google Zeitgeist, Microsofts xRank and Yahoo! Buzz, along with some personal queries. These queries spanned multiple categories, including Entertainment, Health, Local, News, Retail, Sports, Travel and Other.

After conducting the same query across all three Search sites, we picked a winner based on: 1) relevancy of the organic search results; and 2) robustness of the search experience, which included factors such as image and video inclusion, Search Assist, and Site Breakout.

Here are some of the charts from the study:

Its interesting to note that Bing actually beat Google in 2 categories: Health & Travel, while Yahoo really struggled.

Our readers however seem to have a different view on which search engine is better. Our latest poll asked whether Bing is a better search engine than Google. So far 50% of you think Bing is better, 39% believe Google is better and 11% are unsure. Want to add your thoughts? Take our poll here.

So is all the hype surrounding Bing justified? I think Google should be careful. Bing is well on the way to becoming a big competitor especially with all the bells and whistles they are fast adding to the search experience.

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