Bing vs. Google for Breaking News Stories

I read an article this morning which made the claim that Bing does not produce results as fresh as Google and therefore favors aged pages or sites at the expense of fresh content. I decided to do a side by side comparison of the two engines to test this out myself, using 3 unrelated breaking news queries and the comparison tool Bingle. The queries I randomly chose were "Sonia Sotomayor", "Air France Crash", and "U.S. Unemployment Rate". Based on this limited scope test, Bing topped Google in freshness, presentation, and blended results, although Google edged out Bing in organic relevancy.



Search Query: "Sonia Sotomayor"



Bing Results:

Bing places the most recent news articles at the top of the search results, with the most recent news article being less than 1 hour old. It includes an image result at the top, to the right of the news results, so that the user can see a picture of Justice Sotomayor. Below the news results are organic web results beginning with Wikipedia then an article from a newspaper which was written on May 27, 2009.

Google Results:

Googlepedia includes its requisite first position Wikipedia listing, which is followed by a .gov link from the Federal Judicial Center that nobody will read, followed by a newspaper article dated May 1, 2009 (26 days older than the first organic newspaper article in Bing) which is provided both a main listing and an indented listing. Only after these four entries does Google provide its fresh news results, with the latest news article being 2 hours old (1 hour older than the freshest Bing news result). No other blended results, including images, are provided.

And the winner is:

Fresh Content: Bing
Blended Results: Bing
Organic Relevancy: Bing
Presentation: Bing

Search Query: "Air France Crash"



Bing Results:

The Bing results are beautiful - just look at them. At the very top the recent news results are provided, along with an image to the left of the results. The most recent news result is 3 hours old. Below the news results it provides 4 news videos, followed by 4 images. The organic web results then begin with a Wikipedia article on Air France Flight 358, which crashed in 2005 and is not the same Air France flight that recently experienced tragedy off of the coast of South America. As this entry is not relevant to what most people who typed this in would be searching for, I'm going to give relevancy to Google on this one (see below).

Google Results:

Google also lists the news results first for this query, the freshest being 1 hour old. However, this does not tell the whole story - as the 1 hour old piece of content is breaking the same news that Bing's 5 hour old news result covers (the discovery of additional bodies). Also, Google news results do not turn up the discovery of the tail section of the airliner, which is the most recent development, although Bing has a result 3 hours old regarding this. Therefore, the advantage here has to go to Bing, for providing not only the freshest content, but for producing breaking news results hours before Google provides them. Google then provides a couple of quality organic web results from CNN and Yahoo News, which is followed by image results and then video results.

And the winner is:

Fresh Content: Bing
Blended Results: Bing
Organic Relevancy: Google
Presentation: Bing

Search Query: "U.S. Unemployment Rate"



Bing:

For this query Bing provided no blended results. The first two organic web listings are .gov sites followed by Wikipedia and various articles, the most recent of which is the VOA News in position 6 dated June 7 (only 2 days ago), but also producing a 4 day old web result from theregister.co.uk.


Google:

Google provided a nice little graph from their Public Data database, which quickly and succinctly answers most questions one would have if entering the designated query, the data is from May 1, 2009. It then provides news results as recent as 3 days old followed by web results which begin with the same bls.gov results Bing produced followed by the same 2 day old VOA article Bing produced. As both Google and Bing produced the same VOA article as the freshest result, followed by the same bls.gov and VOA sites, freshness is a draw. As to relevancy, I'm going to give Google the edge in this one as it surprisingly did not include a Wikipedia entry in the top five results.

And the winner is:

Fresh Content: Tie
Blended Results: Google
Organic Relevancy: Google
Presentation: Google


Overall Results:

Bing: 7
Google: 4
Tie: 1

Results by Category:

Fresh Content: Bing 2, Google 0, Tie 1
Blended Results: Bing 2, Google 1
Organic Relevancy: Bing 1, Google 2
Presentation: Bing 2, Google 1

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About the Author: Matt Foster is the CEO of ArteWorks SEO, one of the most recognized search engine optimization companies on the web.

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SMX Advanced Synopsis: Bing.com Keynote

Synopsis of the Bing.com Keynote session at SMX Advanced. Written in real time format.

Bing is officially launched as of today, preview labels are off.

Bing is intended to make the search experience more efficient and organized. The monolithic search page is a thing of the past.

A search for "Seattle", for example, will show attractions, weather, or information on Seattle. Key idea: understanding user intent, based on semantic meaning and purpose of search.

Understanding user intent and delivering highly relevant and rich results requires immense computational power.

1) Bing produces a search experience vastly more compelling than what has been offered to date.
2) The best way to predict the future is to create it. That's what Bing does.

Microsoft welcomes innovators such as Wolfram Alpha.

The key to Bing is understanding user intent.

Bing is a new brand which only represents search. Bing is short, easy to pronounce, works well across the globe. As it turns out, in Chinese "bing" means "very certain to respond".

What will become of MSN Live services?

-MSN will still be there
-The Live brand will continue to exist, as there is a suite of products, IM, hotmail, Windows Live, etcetera
-Bing will only represent search

There is still much to be done in search. Search is extremely important for consumers and is the means by which most users encounter information on the Internet.

Bing will be extremely focused on ongoing R&D and seeking product innovations. The brand will be marketed aggressively.

Speaker would not discuss plans for Bing acquisition of Yahoo search assets.

What about real time search?
-Bing's results favor fresh content
-Real time search is important. No comment on any deal with Twitter or whether there would be a Microsoft answer to Twitter

Will Bing provide tools for site owners and advertisers, such as Google's Webmaster Central, etc? Answer: Vague...the more user intent can be understood, the better tools can be offered.

The web is a rich place, if a search engine can do a better job of organizing search results, webmasters should be offered tools for assisting them in achieving visibility for their sites.

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