Different Search Engines, Different Approaches
Alphabet’s Google and Microsoft’s Bing are the two best known search engines in use today. Google’s imprint on the internet of the last two decades and is indisputable, and while Bing has failed to break through into the market to the same extent, it’s not necessarily an inferior product. In fact, the two take different approaches such that neither can be universally declared “the best.” Each makes fundamental design decisions to differ it from its competitor.
For example, the two differ in their use of keywords. Keywords are words that are indexed by the search engine and help determine what appears when one “searches.” Google focuses on using searched words to bring results with more broad topics. Bing on the other hand gives more “precise” results. Searching for a specific page of a website is more likely to yield that specific page on Bing than Google. However, precise isn’t always better, as this may lead to related pages not showing up in results as well.
Another important difference is that Google chooses to completely ignore meta-keywords. Meta-keywords are pieces of text hidden in the website and are used to account for spelling errors or results that may not appear on the page itself but are relevant enough that a web-develop wants inquires for it to appear. This is how Bing chooses to incorporate a width of results into its algorithm, but it has a downside in that web-programmers abuse meta-keywords to include irrelevant pieces of information to get more clicks.
Bing’s results also have a bias to social media and images. Their integration in general inquiries makes it easier to find such content in more general search inquiries. This allows for one to find one’s friend’s number of twitter followers of restaurant reviews left on Facebook by friends.
Although Google may be the name brand of search algorithms, this shows how the design choices of search algorithms could yield different results and the different layers of complexity that come with making a search algorithm.
https://www.wordstream.com/meta-keyword
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-bing-vs-google/223363/
https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/09/26/5-things-that-bing-does-better-than-google/