Think you prefer Google? How do you really know?
Lots of the time on this blog we go on about Google. We’ve extolled its virtues as a search engine, and waxed lyrical about its rate of innovation. And when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation, the advice we give you is how to boost your website up the Search Engine Results page for Google, and not Yahoo or Bing.
All this of course is because Google is the most popular search engine. In the US 65% of web users prefer Google. In the UK it’s closer to 90%.
But how do you know that you prefer Google? Oh sure, at some point in the past you tried it, liked it, and found the results the most accurate search could offer. You made the psychological decision to stick with it and be loyal. If you have tried another search engine since, such as Bing, how many of you had already decided to give it a go in the full knowledge that you’d still stick to Google no matter how good the results?
And that’s typical of how, as consumers, we choose one brand over another. The first time you try similar products from different companies, it’s difficult to make up your mind. But once the mind is made up, most of us tend to keep to that decision. Apart from requiring no further effort, it constantly reaffirms to each of us that we made the right choice.
And that’s where blind search testing comes in. The website http://blindsearch.fejus.com allows you to compare the results for Google, Yahoo and Bing. The results are stripped bare of any branding, design, or clues to which search engine is delivering which result. Users can than vote for the result that they think is most relevant to their search query
And the interesting thing is that once all that branding is stripped away, we can make an honest decision about which SERP is most relevant to our search query. Once again we can evaluate the quality of the results without any preconceptions of that search engine’s brand.
Here’s the surprising bit. After around a month of testing, this blind search tool found that users preferred Google 41% of the time, Bing 31% and Yahoo 28%. That’s a huge discrepancy each search engine’s actual market share.
Aside from showing that we’re making the decision to stick with Google for reasons other than its accurate results, it also shows what an uphill battle the other search engines have. Even if they make their product much, much better than Google, in all likelihood people are going to be reluctant to switch.
Have a go on the blind search tool and let us know which result you prefer best.