Some time ago in the dim and distant past, Bing put together a 'Bing it on' challenge. You typed in a search and got two sets of results, you chose the one you liked the best, repeated 5 times and then it told you if you preferred Bing or Google results. This worked for a couple of days, then for reasons that they never explained, they withdrew it from the UK. Now they have brought it back, so you can try the test yourself. This was my result:
Sorry Bing - but Google won 4 out of 5 rounds.
The results are interesting, with UK users preferred Bing 53% of the time, while Google was chosen 34%, with 13% who couldn't make up their minds. That's the overall result, but if you look at the data in a little more detail, with results from each individual search, Bing comes out on top 39%, with Google coming in a little behind at 32% with the don't knows at 29%. Now, if you're raising your eyebrows at this, you might want to have a look at an interesting critique of the Bing figures from Freakonomics.
I'm keen to see what my blog readers think. So, if you've got approximately 3 minutes to spare, take the challenge yourself, and post your result in the comments.
Being a Health Librarian I did a few searches based on recent literature searches I did for clinical staff. I had two results for Google, and 1 for Bing - the other two I listed as draws as they pulled up mostly the same results, just in a different order!
Posted by: Lisa Basini | October 11, 2013 at 12:24 PM
Google 2, Bing 0, draw 3
Posted by: Rachel | October 11, 2013 at 12:30 PM
Google 5 Bing 0
Posted by: Karen Blakeman | October 11, 2013 at 12:33 PM
Bing 4-1 for me. Time to investigate it further I feel...
Posted by: Catherine Rochester | October 11, 2013 at 12:43 PM
With another set of searches the results were Google 4 Bing 1.
Posted by: Karen Blakeman | October 11, 2013 at 12:55 PM
Google 2, Bing 1, 2 score draws
Posted by: Stuart Benjamin | October 11, 2013 at 01:00 PM
Bing won 4 out of the 5 (Dewey classification, David Jason, Library skills for teens and Cake!) and the extra round was a draw (Dealing with difficult people).
Posted by: Emma | October 11, 2013 at 01:44 PM
But in the Netherlands we are still directly redirected to the regular BING page :(
Posted by: Eric | October 11, 2013 at 02:55 PM
Google for all 5
Posted by: Sam Oakley | October 12, 2013 at 07:47 AM
@Eric: ditto in Australia... :(
Posted by: Therese K | October 13, 2013 at 10:54 AM
Google3: Bing2
Posted by: Norman Boyd | October 14, 2013 at 09:28 AM
Google won 3-2. Bing was ok for popular topic, but google was better for technical subjects, metallurgy, reenactment and IT topic
Posted by: john | October 15, 2013 at 04:46 PM
Google 2, Bing 2, drew 2
Posted by: James Blake | October 17, 2013 at 09:13 AM
Google 3, Draw 2, Bing 0 ....
Posted by: Alice Tyrell | October 17, 2013 at 05:59 PM