I Switched to Bing for a Month, here's what happened

Spoiler Alert: Life can be really different

People want to try something new, Maybe they get bored, they are doing the same things every day, every hour, every minute, they are burnt out. Or maybe they heard of this new trendy thing that everyone is talking about, they want to be trendy as well. Or maybe they are like me, a geek that wants to make sure every piece of technology I use is fine-tuned. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes...... Maybe it's just too much.

So I think I've been living under a rock because I just knew that Microsoft offers a reward program, like a month ago. So for some of you who don't know, this is how it works: Microsoft offers you tasks to get points, and you can use those points to redeem rewards, usually gift cards. If you have the Vegas spirit, you can also redeem entries that draw an XBOX ONE or Surface Laptop every month. So what are the tasks you ask? Well, search on Bing.

Like literally, you just need to search on Bing while having your Microsoft account logged in to your browser.

You can also get additional points if you are using Edge Browser, and using Bing on mobile platforms like Android and iOS. So I was lured in by the rewards, switching everything from Google. I was already using Edge Chromium Browser, which I highly recommend, so I just change my default search engine to Bing, and hoping everything will be just fine.

First Week

I was trying my best to adapt to Bing, changing a search engine seems like something so tiny, but there are many noticeable differences. The first thing I noticed is not the search engine itself, but other Google products like google map and Gmail. For example, before switching to Bing, if I search "map" google map shows up (of course), which I would safely say is a superior option over the Bing map.

Google also has Google products toolbar at the top right of any Google's page, which gives quick access to Gmail, Google Drive etc. Bing just doesn't offer that functionality, this may not be a problem for some people, but many people rely on Google's product, and many don't even realize it. (like myself)

Although I was getting a bit of trouble here and there, I considered that it was normal when I switch my tools and habits all of a sudden.

Second and Third Week

2 weeks in, and there's a lot to talk about. the bright side is the Microsoft Rewards Program I mentioned above. I've been getting many points quickly and I redeemed a bunch of entries to the Surface Laptop prize draw, but that's pretty much all the good stuff.

For the past 2 weeks, I've seen some posts that compare Bing with Google. I've seen many claims that Bing is superior to Google. (which in my opinion is pure BS) But at first, I was buying it, I genuinely thought that they were telling me the truth until I personally figure out what's different between Bing and Google.

Bing is not a really bad search engine, it does its job, most of the time. If we want to search for something not really specific, something simple, it does a good job. You can search for a chicken recipe, incoming PS4 games, or some news, it's fine. However, once you do a long search, something very specific, Bing can't hold up to Google. This is specifically common when I was trying to solve a very specific problem or web page.

Sometimes the web page I was searching for is indexed lower on Bing, which forces you to scroll down to different pages, and sometimes they don't show up at all. While I was searching, I type in a very specific long sentence, I know it's the title of the web page, but it doesn't show up. I did the exact same thing on Google, and Google gets to find it and show it as the first result. I've done multiple tests like this, this is not a coincidence.

Last Week, and it ends

At this moment, I've been deep into Bing so much that I forgot I was using Bing. In retrospect, that's very interesting, I know Google is a better search engine and I've bumped a couple of problems for the past few weeks, but I still endured for the sake of getting those reward points. When humans get used to something, we would not be thinking of switching it, we get so comfortable, even though we know there's something better out there.

I've made Bing a part of my routine, I could easily forget about Google, but at the end of the week, everything takes a turn.

So I was doing some tasks I was given, there was some specific technical problem I couldn't figure out, so naturally, I opened up my browser and start "Bing it". Well, there was no solution online. I was very frustrated, but at the time, I just thought there was no solution to this problem. So I reported back to my supervisor said I don't know how to solve this task, I also said that I searched on the internet and there was no result. My supervisor questioned me what I was searching for, she was very sure that there is a way to solve the problem, and she's not someone that says random stuff. (yeah she doesn't use Quora) I felt defeated, there seems to be an obvious solution out there, but I can't even find it, I was questioning myself what have I done wrong. At that moment, there was a revelation, suddenly I remembered Google.

So I hopped back to Google (still using my Edge Chromium though), search the same things, and boom, the answer is on the first page, life is easy as 1,2,3. And that's it, I ditched the Microsoft reward program, I went back to Google.

Why is Google better?

Someone of you may ask, why is Google better? Why some stuff is on Google but not on Bing? I don't specialize in web technology and search engines, but this is my take. Essentially, search engines crawl all the web pages that got submitted, they index them based on relevancy and popularity, then display them in a web page, which is the search result displayed from Google and Bing.

However, Google has a lot more market share than Bing, like a lot more. That means if anyone is going to submit a website on the internet, most likely they will go through Google, many will still submit to Bing, but not everyone. Google's ranking algorithm is probably another reason. What I noticed was Bing barely shows Quora result, but Google does, Google shows most of the stuff on their page, as long as they are relevant.

Source: https://www.webfx.com/blog/seo/2019-search-market-share/

I guess the moral of the story is, Bing is fine for people that just want to use something, search something simple, but if you are a technical person that has specific questions, or curious person that likes to discover, or just want something better, stick with Google.