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What Happens When You Search for “Google” on Bing?

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google on bingIn one of my recent random keyword searches on Bing, I thought it might be funny to see what happens if you tried searching for “Google” on Bing, which I suspect probably happens on a regular basis. And looks like Bing is having some fun with it, while encouraging people to consider just using Bing for all their searches instead.

A box expands from the search query box asking “Will Bing beat Google?” and talks about how in blind tests, people are actually preferring the Bing results over Googles.

will bing beat googleThis box seems to only come up once per user – once you see it, it won’t come up again on subsequent searches for the “Google” keyword.  So they don’t seem to try hitting users over the head in their quest to get users to switch to Bing, which is a much different approach than Yahoo is taking recently in its own quest to get users to switch to the Firefox default search engine.

If you see the box, when you click the “go now”, it takes you to the Bing It On page, a site that was launched previously in 2013 as part of their “Bing It On” campaign to encourage users to officially make the switch from Google to Bing.  It was supported by a large media buy as well, including television ads.

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While the “Will Bing Beat Google?” prompt in the search results seems to be displayed to all users, only US users can actually click through to the Bing It On challenge.  Non-US searchers will end up being immediately redirected back to the Bing homepage, leaving those people wondering what happened and why.

Doing the same search on Yahoo does not prompt anything about Bing or Yahoo, even though those search results are also served by Bing.

Will this encourage people to switch?  Not exactly sure.  But it is kind of nice seeing Bing It On getting some use again two years later.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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