Google vs. Bing
There are many search engines on the internet. But what differentiates one from the other? Is Google superior to Bing?
I conducted a little experiment. I typed the same “clue” into Google and Bing’s search boxes and observed the respective search results. The “clue” I provided was “movie with break up and Hawaii.” I was looking for search results that referenced the movie “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” Google met my expectations, the top three results from Google all referenced “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” Bing, on the other hand, did not meet my expectations, none of the top three results referenced “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” Now, I understand that this is not a perfect experiment. However, it does show some insight into perhaps why Google has become a verb in our homes, schools, and workplaces, “Just Google it!”
In class, we learned about Hubs and Authorities. We learned how to apply the Hub Update Rule and the Authority Update Rule. Both are procedures to rank web pages. Although Google and Bing’s algorithms may be far more complicated than the Hub and Authority Update Rules, they probably draw from similar concepts of how to rank a set of search results.
From conducting my simple experiment, I learned that not all search engines are created equal, and the algorithms that support these search engines may just be the reason for their efficiencies.
Here are screenshots from my experiment: http://i.imgur.com/EEfy1.jpg.
Here is an article that discusses this topic further: http://gigaom.com/collaboration/bing-vs-google-comparing-them-side-by-side/.