Google is Better: Bing Searches Miss the Target (Badly)
From time to time I do a couple of little tests just to make sure Google and Bing are still indexing my site. In my latest test, which I did today, I actually tried opening the search links that were found; which is not something I typically do. Normally I do my test searches and if Google and/or Bing find the searched for articles then I figure the test is over because my site is still being indexed.
But this time I actually clicked on the links …….
My first test this time was to search for “anime mouse mat”, complete with the literals, so the search is pretty tight. Following is what Bing returned.
On the upside you can see that Bing is still indexing my site and the link to the ‘Anime Mouse Mat’ posting comes up 5th on the search list. Now you would expect that when you click this link you would be taken to that particular posting on my site. But when you click this link you get taken to the front page of my site and you will see whatever happens to be the latest posting. You don’t get taken to the posting about the Anime mouse mat! Which is what I was surely expecting to happen.
The same test with Google works much better. To start with Google indexes my site in third place, so it is two places higher than on the Bing search.
And when you click the link, as you can see from the URL shown under the index item, you get taken directly to the posting about the Amine mouse mat—as expected.
I decided to repeat the test.
This time I searched for “seriously cute niece”+“way up north”. This is a really tight search. With both terms in literals the search engine has to find both these exact phrases used on the same ‘page’.
Bing found it, and as the search is so tight, it was the number one item indexed—with only two items being found in total.
But hang on! When I click the top search item listed I get taken to a posting on my site about cropping images!
Trying the second link shown in the search results doesn’t work out any better. You get taken to a detailed and complete posting about what happens after you die.
Neither of the postings indexed contain either the text “seriously cute niece” or “way up north”!!! What kind of indexing is that!!
Google does much better. Google puts up 78 matches. This is because Google tries a little harder, which can be good, but sometime can be bad. Once Google has done the search specified, which was the dual-literal phrase search, it then plays around with the requested search a bit, trying to be helpful in case you got the search request wrong, and finds a few close-match suggested results for you.
But, most importantly, the first result Google lists *is* the correct item. And when you click it you are taken to the actual posting being searched for—rather than some other, seemingly, random article on my site.
At some stage I might put in the time to do some more testing and see if I can get to the bottom of the logic being used by Bing. But for now I think I might revert back to using Google as my preferred search engine.
