Bing Users' Click-Through Rate 55% Higher Than Google Users' 268
An anonymous reader writes "Techcrunch is running a story that shows some pretty significant differences in the clicking habits of users of Yahoo, Google, and Bing. As it turns out, folks who arrive at websites via Bing are 55% more likely to click on an ad than if they arrived from Google (data based on the Chitika network). Essentially, people who use Bing are far more susceptible to advertising. Bing has acquired a decent market share in such a short time, but could it just be that they've reaped the low hanging fruit of those particularly persuaded by advertising? When their huge marketing campaign winds down, what kind of staying power will it have?"
Something fishy about Bing (Score:5, Interesting)
I make a habit out of checking out the awstats for our domain, and noticed something kinda odd. Bing very quickly became our top referring site. This might just be awstats not treating bing as a search engine (and categorizing hits from them accordingly) or it could be Bing doing something fishy.
Anyone else see something like this?
Umm... cash back anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm? I don't suppose this statistic is anyway affected by the fact that maybe they (Microsoft) give UP TO 35 FREAKING % cashback on items?
I mean... of course you're going to get a higher click through rate when you're offering a 35% discount for clicking through on Bing vs clicking through on Google.
I've gotten close to $1000 back for using Live search aka Bing. Of course I check there first... if I find an ad with the Microsoft cashback option, you better believe I snap it up. Then I go back to Google to do my real searching.
This statistic is completely meaningless since it's blatantly obvious that people are going to use a service that GIVES THEM MONEY vs a service that is just plain free. Gee, imagine that.
Obvious (Score:1, Interesting)
Many people who go to Bing have clicked on ads to get there. They're the only people on the internet who don't have ad-blockers.
Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
The story is pretty clear that, even with bing's higher click-thru rate, The Google still gets your ad about 13 times as many impressions. Though, not knowing the pricing structures both companies use for ads, I could not tell you the proper return on advertising for both services.
(Note also that, after the initial bump, Bing has once again fallen behind Yahoo.)
Re:Umm... cash back anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
...and I suppose a guy with a link in his sig for "get paid to take surveys online" would know a bit about this subject, no?
Re:The ads are not presented as ads (Score:3, Interesting)
Can someone tell me how this higher click-through is some sort of a discovery? Bing integrates the ads into the search results. That is why it is smarter to use google - at least with google you can opt not to click on the ad.
Show me where the ad is. [bing.com] What? You can't tell? Me either - so don't use Bing.
What are you talking about? The ads and distinction made (background colour, "sponsored links", top and right) is damn near identical to similar search on Google [google.com]. Are you talking about the "shop for" extra feature? That is not ads, but a (very useful) integrated shopping search result (similar to going to Google Product Search). Having additional levels of search functionality integrated in the answers like this for some verticals (shopping, travel, etc.) is one of the ways Bing try to differentiate from Google (together with the left column drill-down functionality, which I'm starting to like more and more after trying it).
It's all Live Cashback bribery (Score:5, Interesting)
If you sign up for Microsoft Live Cashback, you can use Bing search to get discounts on stuff you buy.
In effect, Microsoft is bribing the general public to use their search engine. This is not designed to be profitable or sustainable. Of course, I'm sure Microsoft doesn't care, as long as it hurts Google's biggest revenue stream.
I use Bing to "search" for something that I already know I want to buy, and then click on the Cashback link to get anywhere from 2-30% off on my purchase.
This isn't really "searching" the internet. It's jumping through hoops to get a discount. I'd buy the thing anyway whether it was advertised or not, whether I'd get a discount or not. Since the discount's available, I take advantage of it.
Of course, advertisers don't actually care about people searching the internet the real way. They care about people buying stuff from them. If they believe that Bing users are more likely to buy than Google users, they'll probably put a lot of advertising money up at Bing. I actually block advertising in both search results, but I turn it off temporarily if I want to make a Cashback purchase.
Aside from a few accidental uses, and a few test searches to see how the results compared with I *never* use Bing when searching for any kind of information if I'm just doing a general web search, I use google's search engine. I don't know that Bing search results are any better or worse than Google's, but I'm comfortable using Google and I know that I'll usually find what I'm looking for pretty easily once I find the right query terms to enter.
Google is ripe for replacement (Score:1, Interesting)
I am one of those Microsoft haters that Linus Torvalds thinks is crazy. And I haven't been to Bing yet. But I will say that Google is ripe for replacement as the search engine of choice. When Google first came out it was a wonder. I could put in a search term and the information I wanted came up usually on the first page. But as Google worked to index more and more of the web there were more and more results to look through and I had to scan through more pages to find the information I wanted. Then came search engine optimization, which put more and more garbage in the results. Then Google killed usenet by creating Google Groups (actually they just contributed to it's death). So since the natural information hierarchy in usenet has been destroyed the web has been trying to regain this with "tags", with virtually no success.
So I am ready for something that is not Google. I doubt Microsoft could create a suitable replacement. As a corporation they have always focused on what is good for their company, and not what is good for the consumer.
Yeah, I wonder who's doing the clicking? (Score:1, Interesting)
Remember that about 10% of the Windows machines are no longer under the control of their owners....and "click-through rate" is perhaps the ONE variable that will sell Bing (Bling? Whatever, it's crap) to the world.
30 years of lying to people makes people untrusting...
Re:What a surprise (Score:0, Interesting)
I'd personally would like to see the Google click through rate reduced as it appears some 20%-40% of the clicks I get are completely fraudulent. And almost without fail they are the most expensive clicks. Often they show up as zero seconds on the destination URL. Google seems more than content to knowingly allow the fraud and profit from it. Its like not more clicks than impressions is hard to detect.
Re:What a surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
Something just bothers me about the "decision engine" thing. I'd like to think people are smart enough to make their own decisions and not follow whatever their search engine tells them to do, but for some reason I doubt that is the case. I think the major reason people click on more adds when using Bing is that those of us who Google already have some idea of what we are looking for, those of us who use Bing are looking for someone or something to make those choices for us. As for me, even if Bing was the best search engine ever invented, it gives me a bloody headache to look at it.
Yeah, I don't like it either and it's easy to deconstruct. When you don't really value and cherish freedom, you necessarily also don't value relative independence and self-sufficiency. When you don't have such firm and truly worthy principles, then you must resort to viewing everything in terms of whether or not it is immediately convenient. That means you view any independent problem-solving or decision-making as a burden or a price of admission for getting what you want, instead of viewing it as a way to expand your knowledge or to sharpen your skills. So someone comes along and offers to do some thinking and decision-making for you and then you can't help but view that as very nice of them. It's a naivete that might be cute if so many (so-called) adults didn't subscribe to it.
That's really just the tip of the iceberg. Bing is a rather benign effect of this horrible mentality. The ever-increasing size and power of government is a malign effect that goes with it because these are helpless people who need to be taken care of. So is the lack of independent realization in the average person; that is, the absence of ideas that someone else didn't spent a lot of money to put there. I do not exaggerate when I say that this is unsustainable and a nation which is based on this idea is well on its way to collapsing. Bing's "selling points" and why anyone would find them desirable are just symptoms of much deeper phenomena. Really, Microsoft is just giving those people what they want and probably doesn't care (or even know) about why they want it or whether it's good for them to have.
Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Great news for me (Score:4, Interesting)
Vista offered to look for a program on the Web... it used Bing to seek a solution... and the "sponsored link" he clecked was malware.
Bottom line: Bing gave me a $90 cleanup job.
Re:What a surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
I would venture to say that most humans are born curious, but then have it beaten out of them, both figuratively through the demands of societal conformity(specifically through the education system, church, etc.), and literally by the parents. It all happens at a very early age usually beyond conscious memory of the adult. Either way, it's usually our environment that kills the urge. Genetics plays a comparatively small part.
This is absolutely the truth! Any thorough investigation into the matter will convince you that this has been both deliberate and systematically executed, for the purpose of creating a society of people who are easier to control because they do not have strong minds that are willing to question. The public schools are essential to this effort and it could not have been so successful without them.
Albert Einstein once said "it's a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."
Also, you are not really venturing with that one. You are exercising the natural intuitive brightness and discernment that is your birthright as a human being. I say this because you may not be aware of how profound your insight actually is or of the real means by which you understood it. Let's say it was more direct than ordinary deductive processes. It only feels like a venture because people who do not possess that brightness may ask you to prove it to them logically or mathematically which is quite difficult compared to being able to see it on your own and know that it is the truth. The challenge is learning to trust that intuition.
It's a delight for me whenever I see an example of this. It makes me believe that there is still some hope, that maybe this unsustainable society doesn't need to collapse under the weight of its own excesses, or that if it does that it will be replaced by something much better. You won't see them promoted in the media because the media is heavily invested in the status quo, but I am encountering more and more people who have real understanding to some degree or another.
If I may, I'd like to recommend something to you. Another man has explored the same realization you have shared here, and for the subject of public schools he is quite exceptional because he was a schoolteacher for decades who was very good at what he did. He had to resign after he realized the damage that was being done in the name of education. His name is John Taylor Gatto. I'd highly recommend to you his essay [cantrip.org] and also his free online book [johntaylorgatto.com]. There is no better reference for this subject anywhere. Both are enlightening reads that I think you will truly enjoy.
Stupid MSN.com "headlines" (Score:1, Interesting)
The obvious reason why Bing gets so many hits and click-throughs is because there are many headlines on MSN.com linked to Bing. And most computer users have MSN.com as their home page. Hence a lot of clicks will happen.
I'm getting really sick of clicking on what looks like a news headline, but is in fact a link to a Bing search on the topic. Stupid MSN.
Re:What a surprise (Score:2, Interesting)
then why is it that since the beginning of the history of homo sapiens we have been a deeply religious/theistic species?
Well, considering that written history hardly goes 20,000 years back, that really doesn't mean much, does it? The fact that it was written might indicate a system of formal education already existed. And within the realm of psychology(funny that you brought that up, because it was on my mind), especially social(mass) psychology, the 1930s were exciting times, and they got a pretty good handle on the nature of religion, authoritarianism, and natural phobias. And I would bet that even 6,000 years ago they knew what they were doing with the tools they had. In those "olden" days people were very inquisitive, and fearful of the things they didn't understand, and the people who figured things out had the opportunity to teach and guide them, but instead they took advantage of the situation and enslaved them by exploiting those fears and killing off any critical thought. Tin hats? Don't think so. Just people doing "like they do on the Discovery Channel".