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Think You Prefer Google? Microsoft Says ‘Bing It On’ in New Challenge

Sep. 6, 2012 7:30pm Liz Klimas

Microsoft Launches Bing It On Challenge Against Google and Reveals Study Saying Users Prefer Bing 2:1

(Image: BingItOn.com)

Google has long been ranked as the most popular search engine and others like Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo have been struggling to keep up.

Earlier this year, a study showed Bing had surpassed Yahoo — the search for which is actually powered by Bing — for the No. 2 slot. But still unsatisfied, Bing is now challenging Google users to see which search engine they really prefer. In essence, “Bing It On.”

“With Bing It On, we’re encouraging you to try Bing – whether you’re a first time customer or an occasional visitor. You may be surprised at what Bing offers and how it can help you spend less time searching and more time doing,” The Bing Team wrote on its community blog.

A study conducted by an independent research agency commissioned by Microsoft found people preferred Bing’s search results over Google 2 to 1:

In the test, participants were shown the main web search results pane of both Bing and Google for 10 search queries of their choice. Bing and Google search results were shown side-by-side on one page for easy comparison – with all branding removed from both search engines. The test did not include ads or content in other parts of the page such as Bing’s Snapshot and Social Search panes and Google’s Knowledge Graph. For each search, the participant was asked which search engine provided the best results – “Left side search engine”, “Right side search engine”, or “Draw.” After each participant performed 10 searches, their votes were totaled to determine the winner (Bing, Google or Draw, in the case of a tie).

When the results were tallied, the outcome was clear – people chose Bing web search results over Google nearly 2:1 in the blind comparison tests. Specifically, of the nearly 1000 participants: 57.4% chose Bing more often, 30.2% chose Google more often; 12.4 % resulted in a draw

In an effort to prove these results to other uses, Bing has released an interactive tool you can use to test yourself. See which site you really prefer by taking the challenge here.

(Image: BingItOn.com)

Here's one of our challenge comparison results for "dinner tonight." (Image: BingItOn.com)

CNET reports Microsoft is also launching an ad campaign to go along with the Bing It On challenge:

Microsoft is promoting the new campaign via nationwide TV and online ads starting tonight during MTV’s Video Music Awards. It also plans to feature the campaign in its Microsoft retail stores and pop-up Bing It On Challenge “stations” across the U.S. Microsoft is using the hashtag #bingiton on Twitter to push the campaign, as well.

Redmond also is launching the Bing It On sweepstakes, with prizes including a Microsoft Surface, Windows 8, an Xbox 360with Kinect for Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE, a Windows Phone. To enter, users are required to tweet a designated Bing It On Challenge tweet. The sweepstakes will run until October 18, with more details available at http://www.bingsweeps.com.

According to recent analytics from comScore, Google held 66.8 percent of the search market while Bing — at second — had 15.6 percent.

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Comments (37)

Mr.Fitnah
Posted on September 10, 2012 at 3:19am
Google works.
Bing doesnt even get close ,it is a great random link generator.

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josh345
Posted on September 8, 2012 at 2:12pm
this is a stupid test – i tried it and the information given by google on the right (for example, when googling “united states” google, on the right, shows a map of the country, the capital, dialing code, population, minimum wage, GDP, national anthem, and points of interest.) this type of thing works on google for people, places, pretty much everything – but doesn’t exist on bing. shut up, bing.

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lylejk
Posted on September 8, 2012 at 10:51am
I use Yahoo for tame stuff (read that as non-political) and IXQuick when I don’t want wandering eyes seeing what I’m searching for. Sad that Google does what it does, but the final straw that stopped me from going out of my way not to use them was the Arab Spring fiasco where employees of Google helped instigate the thing; my gut says with the blessing of BO as well. :)

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SIXFRIGATES
Posted on September 7, 2012 at 10:35pm
Am I the only one who sees a cigarette in the search bar?

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- DRAGONSEED
  Posted on September 8, 2012 at 5:07am
  Yes.
  
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- PutMoreOnMyPlate
  Posted on September 9, 2012 at 6:28pm
  Niccing?
  
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AllAmericanGirl22
Posted on September 7, 2012 at 4:56pm
I haven’t used Google for a LONG time because of their liberal pro government views. I find that BING is just as good if not better.

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Mike777
Posted on September 7, 2012 at 8:34am
I use starting page https://startpage.com/ because they do not track users.

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- Pro-Palin
  Posted on September 7, 2012 at 4:09pm
  same here Mike777
  
  Report this comment
- bikerr
  Posted on September 8, 2012 at 12:12am
  It’s enhanced by
  GOOGLE How different can it be?
  
  Report this comment
- DRAGONSEED
  Posted on September 8, 2012 at 5:07am
  startpage or ixquick – the way to go. They not only don’t track/database you, but you can use their PROXY to view most pages. (Hope they don’t end up going the way of scroogle.org!)
  
  Avoid google like the plague –and avoid bing like the shingles… (Who needs all that snooping & databasing of our innocent little search terms?)
  
  http://www.scroogle.org/sucks.html
  
  Report this comment
stephenb0
Posted on September 7, 2012 at 7:03am
I am a Bing user ! Google is too close with government that’s why I stop using. Google

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- DeVain
  Posted on September 7, 2012 at 7:15am
  Same with me.
  
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- Pearsontech
  Posted on September 7, 2012 at 2:08pm
  And you think Microsoft isn’t? That’s pretty funny and naive.
  
  Report this comment
voting-for-romney
Posted on September 7, 2012 at 6:17am
I found my research for “How Regulation is Destroying American Jobs” by searching for “regulations” which gave me the site heritage.org and was surprised how much material is written and even appealing to Democrats to communicate the costs of regulations to individuals and businesses, thanks to Bing.com?

Bing on the political debate? You know why I link the word “Bing”? It reminds me of the sonar term “ping” so I know when my “sonar” (search key words) go out (bing) I get results of what is in the ocean of data?

Thank you Microsoft, where do you want to bing today?

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woodyee
Posted on September 7, 2012 at 5:51am
Thursday, July 5th, 2012
Startpage Stops Recording Browser and Platform Information Entirely. Great news! As of this week, Startpage will no longer record browser type and platform information (also known as the “user agent”) of our users. This change has gone live on both Startpage and our sister search engine Ixquick (www.Ixquick.com), and translation of the text into non-English languages is underway. The Data Collection section of our Privacy Policy has been revised to reflect this change. Our privacy policy now reads as follows:

Data Collection
We don’t collect any personal information on our visitors. Nada. Zilch. Zero. When you use Startpage, we do not record your IP address, we do not record which browser you are using (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, etc.), we do not record your computer platform (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.), and we do not record your search words or phrases. In fact, the only information we do record is an aggregate total of how many searches are performed on our website each day (a measure of overall traffic), and those overall traffic numbers broken down by language. Our zero data collection policy protects your privacy, since your IP address, browser, and platform information can be combined with other data to uniquely identify your computer, your location, or you. It is also important not to record search terms, since they can convey personal information as well. (Think of someone entering their own name and/or social security num

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judostatic
Posted on September 7, 2012 at 2:12am
you can’t say bing is number 2 the yahoo search is no longer a yahoo search its owned by microsfot now i haven’t used anything but google in years doubt i will go back bing is slow and the results are no where near as accurate or good as bing

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rsletto
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 10:40pm
don’t care for either but google is better. if apple had a search engine i would use that.

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- Cataclysm
  Posted on September 7, 2012 at 6:41pm
  I agree that google is a better search engine but apple is over rated.
  
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anothercomment
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 10:31pm
Did it twice, with a variety of topics, and both times I ended up with Google. I rather use Google for maps, but I chose Bing as a screen saver. I have tried duckduckgo, and it’s a viable alternative, and will try Startpage. I really do not see any difference between the two, I don’t even care if they are analyzing my searches, I just want to able to type in a topic and get the best results on THAT topic, not everything remotely resembling the topic.

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ColoradoNative
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 10:23pm
Go Bing! Google has stolen so much money from people displaying Google ads on their sites. Google encourages web sites to display their ads, then without warning or explanation cancel their adsense accounts, and take the money earned from advertisers. Google really can be despicable!

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steve61lindsey
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 9:19pm
A good friend of mine who lives across the state looked Google to see if the movie 2016 was playing a few weeks ago. He couldn’t find it. I checked on Bing and found it in four movie theaters near his home. Does this mean anything? Maybe, maybe not.

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
– George Orwell

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LimitedLiabilityUser
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 9:10pm
Ugh, Microsoft invests far too much money in marketing and PR, and not enough in bettering their services…

Again, this is coming from the same search engine that explicitly stole results from Google. You can always enable https for Google as well. You have to remember that there are people at Google who simply want to create awesome products and love what they do, and not everyone believes the filth most of Google holds dear.

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- steve61lindsey
  Posted on September 6, 2012 at 9:22pm
  It is good not to trust any company too much.
  
  “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
  – George Orwell
  
  Report this comment
woodyee
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 9:03pm
Go BING! I’ve never liked google’s jack-booted intrusions. If you want anonymity, use Startpage.

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- Chet Hempstead
  Posted on September 6, 2012 at 11:01pm
  I don’t care too much about anonymity. I figure that neither I nor anything I look up are all that interesting. And I don’t assume that Microsoft is showing any more respect for privacy Google. They could be doing the exact some kind of thing while being less transparent about it.
  
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GoodStuff
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 8:46pm
Anything to humble the tech-tyrants at Google.

Go Bing!

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thekuligs
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 8:40pm
I really like BING on my windows phone. It has a lot of cool features. I hear I song a like on the radio it can tell me what song is playing WIN!

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dont_drive_slow_in_the_left_lane_obliviot
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 8:00pm
i use https duckduckgo so i’m not tracked. but i tried it and one side consistently had more results to choose from and after 5th search it choked. waste of time.

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Anonymous T. Irrelevant
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 7:46pm
I use Bing ( B)ecause (I)t’s (n)ot (G)oogle.

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- MAULEMALL
  Posted on September 6, 2012 at 7:53pm
  Yep… When obermama got google to help overthrow our ally in egypt I knew google was doing the govs bidding to get info on us.
  
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- CatB
  Posted on September 6, 2012 at 8:34pm
  I NEVER use G oo gle
  
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- bpodlesnik
  Posted on September 6, 2012 at 8:44pm
  That’s clever. I also have been using Bing, partly because the background can have some interesting facts. Although, typing “Bing” does not flow nearly as well as typing “Google”
  
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Jenny Lind
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 7:44pm
Don’t care if it’s slow, won’t use the others, haven’t for some months. I really didn’t know it’s supposed to be slow. I just like it.

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SITDOWNANDSHUTUP
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 7:38pm
Bing is too s-l-o-w…….especially the videos.

Compared to Google and YouTube, well, there is no comparison.

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- Chet Hempstead
  Posted on September 6, 2012 at 10:53pm
  They don’t want to refer you to YouTube if they can help it. When I did video searches on Bing, the top listing was often some foreign website that took forever to connect, while if you look down the list they will eventually admit that YouTube has equally or more relevant material.
  
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SamIamTwo
Posted on September 6, 2012 at 7:38pm
And who do you want tracking you? duckduckgo(SSL)

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