In an advertising campaign reminiscent of the Pepsi Challenge taste test, Microsoft has taken on Google in a battle of the search engines.
In its campaign dubbed Bing It On, Microsoft challenges consumers to vote in a five-round, side-by-side “search off,” in which users select the results they favor to five search queries. You might have seen the commercial where people favored Bing, while taking the test in San Francisco, near Google’s Mountain View, Calif.-based headquarters, aptly named the Googleplex. Microsoft is located about 850 miles up the coast in Redmond, Wash., near Seattle.
For the test, Microsoft has attempted to remove biases by only showing search results in a similar font and style and leaving off services germane to just one engine. Remember the “blind” no-label taste tests shown in myriad Pepsi advertisements? Clearly, so does Microsoft.
Microsoft claims users have chosen Bing results over Google’s by a nearly 2 to 1 ratio. While my results largely favored Google, I will say I was surprised at how many times I chose Bing over Google the multiple times I answered the challenge at
BingItOn.com.
The math behind Microsoft’s ratio claim came from a survey conducted by San Diego-based independent research company Answers Research, which performed an online test of about 1,000 people ages 18 and older, who selected what they felt were the most relevant results for 10 search queries of their choice. According to Microsoft, 57.4 percent of the participants chose Bing, 30.2 percent selected Google results and 12.4 percent were a draw. Microsoft says respondents weren’t made aware that the company was involved with the survey.
For me, I often could tell the difference between the two search engines based on the results and how they were presented. As a user of Google’s search engine for more than a decade, it was difficult not to choose its results over relative newcomer Bing.
Admittedly, I haven’t given Bing’s service its fair shot. To this, I can only say I have no reason to. Google has provided a search engine that works fantastically. And, for the most part, its services – Gmail, Chrome, Google Maps, Google Docs – are top-tier.
While I am an avid user of the Windows operating system, Microsoft has never impressed me with its other offerings. Installing a different browser – namely Google Chrome – to replace the abhorred Internet Explorer is the first thing I do when I get a new computer, and I don’t think Hotmail can really shake a stick at Gmail, either. I haven’t tried Google’s operating system, so I can’t speak to its quality.
What I think this campaign has going for it is the element of surprise. If you aren’t used to how Google lays out its search results, you might end up picking Bing. On the third try, I attempted to lay my bias aside and vote based on the quality of the results. It didn’t change my outcome. For others, the campaign might be convincing enough to switch to the Microsoft search engine.
Competition is the fuel of capitalism, and it’s never a bad thing to go head-to-head with the biggest and best. It’s certainly an interesting tactic, and using the Pepsi Challenge style is smart, as it is arguably one of the most memorable ad campaigns created.
Springfield Business Journal Web Editor Geoff Pickle can be reached at gpickle@sbj.net.[[In-content Ad]]
