One in Three Searchers May Prefer Bing Over Google

Written on June 26, 2009 by admin

A study of twelve people is not statistically relevant, but it does make for interesting headlines!

According to the Catalyst Group, 1 in 3 Google users preferred the search experience of Bing over the search leader. OK, so that was actually 4 of the 12 total people that Catalyst studied in a report obtained by TechCrunch, but hey, Bing will take all the good news it can get, right?

What is amazing is that when the test subjects were asked to rate Bing on specific criteria (visual design, organization of features, filtering options, and relevance of results), Bing handily beat Google in everything but result relevance. Arguably, that is the most important criteria, but most of the study participants thought that both search engines tied on result relevance. So even though Bing ranked better on design, and tied on relevance, that was not enough for most of them to switch.

Here’s a breakdown of the strengths of each search engine: