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Comments: 268 +- Technology: Bing Users' Click-Through Rate 55% Higher Than Google Users' on Sunday July 26 2009, @01:30PM
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timothy
on Sunday July 26 2009, @01:30PM
from the hey-now-I-like-that-ads-subsidize-stuff dept.
from the hey-now-I-like-that-ads-subsidize-stuff dept.
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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?"
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Submission: CTR of incoming Bing users 55% higher than Google by Anonymous Coward
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What a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Who would have thought that people who would switch to an inferior search engine based on an aggressive marketing campaign would be more susceptible to advertising?
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.)
Parent
Re:What a surprise (Score:4, Informative)
Ads placed on Google and Bing's search result pages are, at the present, wholly billed on a CPC (cost-per-click) basis.
So one could conject that ROI may be a lot higher at Bing right now because of lack of competition (CPC is generally a loosely auction-driven model), but the volume to sustain your business is still at Google.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The use of Bing COULD be boosted by IE 8 choosing that by default. How many users install software defaults?
As for clicking on ads, there are lots of potential reasons, including the ones mentioned here. But of course, since it's a "decision engine" people are more likely to follow that decision. ;-)
Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
The use of Bing COULD be boosted by IE 8 choosing that by default. How many users install software defaults?
As for clicking on ads, there are lots of potential reasons, including the ones mentioned here. But of course, since it's a "decision engine" people are more likely to follow that decision. ;-)
I would be very surprised if there were not a strong correlation between users who don't customize their settings and users who more frequently respond to advertising the way that the advertisers want them to.
That's because defaults are intended to be applied to millions of users and therefore cannot be ideal for all users or even very many of them. At least, I'll say that the number of people who use all-default settings is far greater than the number of users for whom this is ideal. The greater the number of options which can be customized, the more true this is. Someone who has an "ideal" in mind for how their setup should be and is willing to undergo at least some minor effort to arrange it is more likely to be a more independent thinker, reducing the susceptibility to external suggestion such as advertising.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (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
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030514035516436 [macosxhints.com]
It's just Mac & Linux users can, on occasion, manage to do something without a GUI. I'm not saying all Windows users can't, but that huge slice of market share Windows users brag about all the time includes a lot of really dumb people.
Re:What a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes you can: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030514035516436 [macosxhints.com] It's just Mac & Linux users can, on occasion, manage to do something without a GUI. I'm not saying all Windows users can't, but that huge slice of market share Windows users brag about all the time includes a lot of really dumb people.
I don't think those users are merely dumb. A truly dumb person can't help it, and so I wouldn't fault them for that any more than I would blame a paraplegic for being unable to walk. What I do blame those "dumb users" for is something I call willful helplessness. That's when the information is out there, freely available, the person in question is literate and has 'Net access, and refuses to educate themselves even for simple configuration issues. It wouldn't be so bad except that these same people often complain that they don't get the results they want, and/or they think it's a terribly unreasonable thing to suggest that they can help themselves, almost like it's some kind of insult. Usually that's followed by something like "I'm not a computer expert" as though changing basic settings makes one an "expert."
Many such users are on Windows. There could probably be debates about whether that's because Windows inherently suits them or if it's merely because that's what the computer came with and this kind of user is quite unlikely to evaluate other options since that would require the learning that they so resent. The easiest way to identify such folks is that they can use the same machine for years and never know much more about it than when they started. That's what amazes me. It seems like it would take a lot more work to make sure you don't pick up some knowledge here and there that would accumulate over the years, but I suppose you could say that they are true to their passive mentality.
Parent
Re:What a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
...willful helplessness...
I think the "correct" term is learned helplessness, and it is not entirely a matter of free will as much as it is of conditioning. And it really shows itself in our dealings with authority and why more people don't rebel against it.
Parent
Re: (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 rea
Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, he's referring to the browser's search box.
Have you even fucking seen the browser?
... Yeah, it's typically located to the right of the "Address" bar. Are you losing your cool because I called it a toolbar and not a box? Because that's what it looks like to me.
Tell ya what, cut+paste my post into a word processor. Do a search-and-replace to replace every occurrence of "toolbar" with "box". Note that none of the points I was making changes in any way. I have a feeling you aren't sharing my amusement at this. Too bad, that's your loss.
If you don't know that you wrote a troll pos
Re:What a surprise (Score:4, Informative)
I have tested it on a bunch of target search phrases relevant to my business and the results that Bing produces are plainly inferior. It weights substrings in a URL much more highly than Google does and seems to significantly discount anything that looks like inbound link count/quality.
For certain types of queries that aren't in business areas where search engine traffic is competitive, maybe that will produce better results. But in the areas I looked it, it produces garbage.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
However, what if someone used that same search string to find info about:
New Living Expo
National Latin Exam
Nursing Licensing Examination
Bing returned links to those and a few other minor uses of the acronym on the first page. Google, however, only returned results for the Nursing Licensing Exam
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Funny)
You should just be thankful bing didn't return:
"You searched for "SNES Game" - Don't you really mean "Xbox 360 Games"?"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So it couldn't possibly be because on a Microsoft search engine, the terms people search for are more Microsoft-centric, thereby resulting in a biased pool of suggestions?
It couldn't possibly be because most people with a genuine interest in Linux are Microsoft-hating sheep who wouldn't dare go near a Microsoft search engine, resulting in a dearth of Linux-but-not-Microsoft related search terms?
Please.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a pandemic of Microsoft Hating syndrome [slashdot.org], as discovered by Linus Torvalds.
"Syndrome" sounds like a disease. When you really do engage in anticompetitive, manipulative, underhanded practices, have been convicted in multiple nations of doing so in an illegal fashion, have (in my opinion) resorted to bribery to compromise independent standards bodies, have made Webmasters everywhere bear additional costs because you refuse to fully adhere to open standards, and have abused the meaning of "updates to the OS" to install phone-home software (WGA), perhaps it's understandable that many people won't like you? Just maybe that's not a "syndrome" but a predictable outcome?
Mr. Torvalds made a case for why it is sometimes expedient to work with a company that is important in its industry. He has not made the case that their tactics should be celebrated or that it's unreasonable to dislike them. The only way to make that case is to prove that everyone should enjoy the ill effects of abusive practices and that any and all pushback against them is wrong and unfounded. That would not be the argument of a sane person.
Parent
Sort of a double edged sword... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, money. Winner, money.
The reason (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because users of Microsoft services are more stupid than the general population. There, I said it!
Re:The reason (Score:5, Informative)
The really funny thing about this comment is that it was labeled informative...
I agree. "Informative" is for a post providing new information. It should have been "Insightful".
Parent
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?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Something fishy about Bing (Score:5, Informative)
Google Analytics had the same issue for the first few days after Bing was released.
Parent
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Umm... cash back anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who said you can't beat free?
Parent
Re:Umm... cash back anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
I hear you. I'll often find products using google or deal sites, then go through bing just for the cash back - it would be really silly if that sort of usage counted as a bing success story.
TFA doesn't specify whether this sort of usage is included in the comparison.
Parent
Well, (Score:4, Insightful)
S.O.P. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ignore the first month of a search engine, and the first week of a new movie.
After the curious and easily manipulated are out of the way, you can get a real result.
easy come, easy go (Score:2)
If you can quickly gather a user base of easily influenced people, there is nothing stopping a competitor from doing the same thing and taking those people back. I suspect Google and other engines lost a bunch of these sorts of people due to Bing's ad campaign. And they are now seeing the benefits of there marketing.
What we all want for our businesses are those die hard regular customers that love us so much that they will be with us until the end of time. I think Google has quite a few of those people. And
Let's imagine our demographic here... (Score:2)
Bing has pretty much cornered the market of people who use the internet by typing natural language questions into the IE address bar.
Imagine that for a moment... people who use the internet by clicking on the IE address bar and typing "How do I get rich working from home?" So it's really no question why they have the fantastic click-through.
I'd say the data makes perfect sense.
But that's not to say Bing isn't a pretty nice search engine. I use its video search and (occasionally) restrict it to youtube to us
Bing seems to be used by idiots (Score:5, Informative)
I've noticed a *lot* of Bing referrals in my access stats lately.
Almost all of them have, rather bizzarely, been one-word search strings. Here's my bing searches from the current first screen of my access stats, I swear this is genuine:
- keyboard
- gahhh
- really
- email
- comment
- worked
- image
So of the last 20 referrals to me, 7 have come from bing. That's impressive. All seven have clearly been done by people with zero ability to use search engines effectively.
I've tried bing out and found it to be lousy at finding what I'm looking for. I've also got huge amounts of crud like the above filling up my referral logs. I'm seriously considering blocking referrals from bing.com just to stop it clogging up my stats.
Do I think Google should be worried? Not yet, no..
Re:Bing seems to be used by idiots (Score:5, Informative)
Funny you mention that, here's my results (and our server is VERY heavily hit):
Only the first (eclug) and last (terrorism) are really directly relevant to topics on sites I host. Compare that with some Google search results:
90% of the search queries by Google users are directly relevant. bing.com is just throwing random garbage around, it seems.
Parent
Bing l10n.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in a Germany and my browser language preference is set to English (because I prefer it).
Now most sites (including Google) manage to get my geo-location and annoy me with a German start page (ignoring my language preferences). (At least I could set my prefs. at google, but its bothering to do this for every site I visit).
Now visiting Bing gave me something unusual: a hybrid l10n. The controls were partly in English and the search suggestions (random stuff at the button of the screen) came in German. Searching for something gave only German results.
And there I thought it couldn't get worse than it is already.. but this irks the hell out of me.
ps. And the scaling of mostly everything was messed up too.. Way to go if you want to convince technical folks, Microsoft..
Re:Bing l10n.. (Score:5, Informative)
Set your Google link to "http://www.google.com/ncr" and you will get the default English page no matter what prefs you set or where you are.
Parent
I can fix that! (Score:2)
/Proceeds to search 'Microsoft' in Google and clicking on random ads.
On that note, can I really trust Bing to give me faithful results for Linux queries? Who knows.....
Slimy Submission Text (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the type of story summary used here that shows early signs of the disease Linus was talking about. What kind of lowlife asshole uses a phrase like:
reaped the low hanging fruit of those particularly persuaded by advertising
It's advertising, dickhead. If people like what is being advertised they will click the link, watch the commercial, and buy the product. Why is someone who investigates an advertisement deemed less intelligent? Does not fast forwarding through a commercial make you a moron? Does leafing through the Sunday morning circular make you a fool? Ohh, that's right, they are using a Microsoft service. Tee hee. So witty, so funny.
I used to really like Slashdot, but the quality of the submissions is really taking an ugly tone. Who do we blame? The people writing the submission? Or the person who allows it to be post. This isn't even a Kdawson story so we can't blame him. Slashdot doesn't seem to have any commitment to making sure summaries are well written and free from juvenile bias.
TFA has a blatantly skewed perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
1) better product (see the comments regarding Cashback ads)
2) better placement
3) better advertising clients (ever seen an interesting google ad but hesitated to click because of the shady domain?)
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.
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.
Is this data from Chitika audited? (Score:3, Insightful)
This data appears to be provided from one business only - Chitika, presumably from data that they gathered from their advertizing.
Has it been audited with a view to confirming that the click throughs are indeed actually happening?
Has that data been compared with data from all the many other advertizing businesses that spam websites via Search Engines?
To what extent is Chitika's advertizing only based on Microsoft Bing and not on the other search engines? :o)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Combination of no adblockers on the default IE with the default Bing search page on most computers. Bing cashback, and the obfuscation of ads mixed in with real results. I'd say they are doing a good job of covering their bases.
Re: (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 G