Bing vs. Google

I switched my default search engine to Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, about a week ago. I'm used to finding pertinent results to most of my searches with google in the first page and usually the first few links. So my rule for Bing was, if it's not on the first page I'd go to Google and see how it worked there. I just wanted to give a quick report of my experience so far.

For the most part Bing seems to do just fine. I haven't really seen any advantage to it over Google but the rumor is it's supposed to be better for media and perhaps a few other things. I'd say 1 out of every 5 queries I do on Bing I'm not satisfied with the results and so I try Google. Out of those 1/5 I'd say Google gives me what I'm looking for about 2/3 of the time. These are very rough numbers of course, completely off the cuff, but for now it's the best I can do.

Here are a few samples from those 20% that Bing didn't do the job for me (They are pulled out of my twitter so keep that context in mind):

Google beats bing for map search of "rattlesnake creek, covelo, ca". Google nailed it. Bing didn't get close.

RT @pmdorn: @mmadink I crashed Bing! I searched for Google! LOL

Google wins Bing for "add twitter to blogger"

google beats bing for the query "What is a twibe"

And here's a few to give Bing a bit of a moral boost:

Bing did the job for "What is JEE"

Bing beat Google for "google app engine manager". Pretty funny that Bing did a better job then Google for Google's own product.

I've been playing around with Google's web development tools (very cool by the way) and I couldn't find the home page for their App manager. Google would NOT give it to me. Gave Bing a try and it got it on the first page. That's a good example of why competition is good. I love Google but everyone needs some good healthy competition to keep them honest.

So at this point I think it's actually up in the air as to which is actually better. Google obviously has a leg up but Bing is brand spanking new and with that in mind I'm pretty impressed with it. I haven't changed me default search engine back to Google yet either. I will as soon as Bing starts to slow me down.