Bing vs Google vs Yahoo Search
Want an easy way to know if Bing, Yahoo, or Google search will return better quality results? There is an easy way to do this using this site: https://www.mysearchoff.com. It’s great to get simultaneous results from all three engines in a single page. I found this very useful when doing search engine optimization for keyword terms – you can figure out the ranking and see what the page looks like without doing 3x the work. Also, you can vote on what search engine results you think "wins" by clicking on the green checkbox icon in the top right and see the results of peoples' votes.
Also, another site MS employees use to compare Bing to Google (side by side) is https://www.searchvote.com. Our internal one doesn't give any results for Yahoo and in my own opinion is not as good as the public - mysearchoff.com mainly because it has a voting/results feature and is more easy to display the results b/c you can resize the window.
Personally, I like the friendlier display output of Bing Search better than Google Search (i.e. do a search on Barack Obama). Typically Google will have a larger number of results, but IMO this doesn’t matter since you don’t ever really get past the first few pages of results and the Bing Search results are quality for those 1st pages the large majority of the time (and sometimes better than Google's). Try it out for yourself and see!
If you want to provide written feedback to Microsoft about Bing, you can send it via this link: https://feedback.live.com/default.aspx?productkey=wlsearch
On a side but related note, Bing Search gives you cash-based incentives to simply use their search engine (called SearchPerks!) and also cashback on products you purchase through Bing Search. I'm not sure if this will help increase Live Search's ~8% market share of the search engine business, but it's certainly worth mentioning!
Update 12/12/08 - you can check out the Fall 2008 improvements made to Live Search by watching the video on Channel 10.
Update 7/23/09 - updated this post to reflect the name change from "Live Search" to "Bing". Also, there is another comparison site between Bing and Google I became aware of: https://www.bing-vs-google.com/
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thanks Brian for fixing this! Firefox is good to go, the site was updated to use the .Net 3.5 framework, and the scroll bar for Yahoo is now there.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
PingBack from http://www.kozmom.com/3723-extreme-tech-live-search-vs-google-search-vs-yahoo-search.htmAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Happyandyk - I'm guessing you're using Firefox for a browser? I just tested with this and got an error too... I'll send a message to the site creators, but let me know if you're using a different browser which also has problems. Marc - good to hear from you and good call on the scroll bar. I'll also pass this feedback along to the site creator.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Not sure why I didn't realize this was the case... I'm checking to see if we can make this site public. Even if not, you get the same + more functionality (minus the feedback channel) with mysearchoff.com.Anonymous
November 21, 2008
I got a Runtime Error while using this site. Hope they correct it fast. looks good otherwise. Maxthon browser I think has a similar feature too.Anonymous
November 24, 2008
Great tool. Too bad the vertical scroll bar for Yahoo search does not appear.Anonymous
November 25, 2008
just realized that the site crashes with firefox. thanks for the feedback. also, you can vote for the site that gave the best results by clicking the green checkbox and selecting the best. you can also add it to internet explorer's search providers by clicking the orange arrow near the search toolbar. good post!Anonymous
December 12, 2008
www.searchvote.com requires some kind of key that links to an intranet site. Is this only for Microsoft people? Boo!