Commentary
The Real Problem With Microsoft's Bing
- by Steve Baldwin , June 8, 2009
But my joyous reverie was shattered when I recalled a fundamental lesson of merchandising, which is that by making things too easy for your customers to find, you can doom yourself to certain destitution and ruin.
Think of the last time you went to the supermarket to buy a half-gallon of milk. You'd think that the supermarket would put the milk close to the cash register, letting customers complete their walk-in/walk-out cycle in the shortest possible time.
Is that where smart retailers put the milk? Not on your life. They put the milk way at the back of the store, which means you've got to traverse multiple aisles and walk many hundreds of feet before you get to it, exposing yourself to thousands of brightly-colored packages in many product categories screaming "buy me!" The idea here - and, yes, it's slightly diabolical -- is that at some point in your extended journey it will "spontaneously" occur to you that you need some cookies to go with your milk, plus some peanut butter, and maybe even a six pack of beer to wash down your meal.
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Retailers have worked this way for years, and yet nobody's angrily tweeted that "the Waldbaum's Experience Is Broken." But the search industry is a topsy-turvy, reality-inverting world where up is down and left is right. Microsoft's researchers gleefully pronounce that "search is broken," that most queries "fail," and that Bing, by elevating "finding" over "searching," is going to set things right once and for all. One of Microsoft's ads even suggests that if America hadn't been so frenetically searching for stuff over the past few years, we'd have found out that the world's economic system was going to collapse early enough to save Mom and Dad's 401K. Other ads suggest that Google-induced "search overload" is turning people into zombie-like automatons incapable of answering a simple, direct question without regurgitating paragraphs of long-tail content.
Folks, this is a complete crock. I've heard hundreds of complaints about the way the search industry works, but nobody's ever squawked about the querying process itself. In fact, it seems that people are quite happy searching, clicking, refining, and searching again until Kingdom Come. There seems to be something deeply human about compulsive querying behavior that appears to harness primitive hunter-gatherer instincts we've lived with for at least 50,000 years. Where's the caveman thrill of nailing one's quarry after a bracing hunt in the jungle when Bing hands said quarry to you, precooked, on a silver platter?
Search isn't broken and doesn't need fixing. Google -- for better or worse -- has conditioned all of us to realize that multiple queries, ambiguity, endless stacks of results, and the Back Button -- not quickie in-and-out result shortcuts -- are good things that facilitate commercial transactions for products we never even knew existed. Just as few supermarket shoppers grouse about having to walk hundreds of feet to find the item they're looking for in a store, Google's users don't object to having to click many times to find whatever the heck they're looking for. Some might call this wasteful: I call it an educational, horizon-broadening way to spend your time. Furthermore (and it's really a very small point in the overall scheme of things), running a query-driven click factory happens to be insanely profitable for the search engine, so why mess with it?
If Microsoft were really smart, it would ditch its whole "Bing: The Sound of Found" nonsense, take a cue from Google, and introduce Bing with a new slogan: "You'll Never Find What You're Looking For Here, But You'll Have a Great Journey!" By doing so, Bing would make Microsoft's shareholders happier, honor the time-honored merchandising lessons of the supermarket, and be more faithful to the spirit of poet Robert Louis Stevenson, who noted long ago that "it is always better to travel than to arrive."
One last thing. Although it took me 57 Google clicks -- both paid and unpaid -- to find out that Stevenson is the author of the above quote, I'm a wiser, deeper, better-educated person because of it and Google now has a few more hard-earned dollars in its coffers.
Why would Microsoft want to destroy such a beautiful win-win relationship?
I have to say I see some truth here. The reason I loved the encyclopedia in the school library was because in the process of looking-up a less than thrilling topic assigned by the teacher, I would find many things I was really pleased to know!
And, yes, I confess, I never hit "I'm feeling lucky" on Google...
I think it was Voltaire in Candide who talked about traveling rather than arriving, but I haven't read it in quite awhile. Bing or Google?
seems as you have a lot of free time to wasteful search, err learn and search.. i see boths sides of it. but when your looking for something, you want it quickly without having to rummage through a pile of garbage.
I too have been trying to figure out how to get my sites to position on Bing in the same way as Google. Good SEO has rewarded me with positions at the top in all of our keywords on the other search engines, but I was upset at the difference in the highest position on Bing. (though we were still at #4) But in-depth analysis gave me another more pleasant surprise. My sites appear more often in Bing. The SEO, without any modification is paying off with multiple returns on many pages. So the guy traversing to the back of the store for milk is seeing me on the shelf more often. I may like this Bing thing.
By the way, you will be pleased to know that because of your post the Robert Louis Stevenson quote is now #3 of 9 results on Google but does not appear in any of the 7 results for the quote on Bing.
People who complain about walking the extra distance at a supermarket will likely end up at the corner convenience store where they can park closer to the front door and walk a much shorter distance to get their milk (even though milk is in the back of the convenience store too!)
People who know they only "need" milk, but may "want" or likely "need" something else too, will go to the grocery store and be able to get more than just milk after wandering the aisles.
There is a market for both types of stores, the problem is that Bing won't be able to turn their corner store into Super-Walmart anytime soon.
I don't agree. I think that people are happiest when the best answers come up quickly, first, and at the top. However, that doesn't preclude continuing to click on other results that look interesting. Regardless, Bing is and will continue to be a major search player and those who employ paid search as a strategy need to consider it. See here for more: <a href="http://domusinc.blogspot.com/2009/06/bing-yahoo-google-few-new-thoughts.html" target="_blank">New thoughts on Bing, Yahoo, and Google</a>
I don't agree. I think that people are happiest when the best answers come up quickly, first, and at the top. However, that doesn't preclude continuing to click on other results that look interesting. Regardless, Bing is and will continue to be a major search player and those who employ paid search as a strategy need to consider it. See here for more: http://domusinc.blogspot.com/2009/06/bing-yahoo-google-few-new-thoughts.html
I do not know what you freaks are looking for but the phase is "It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive." And bing.com gives correct results while google fails. I am switching to bing until google catches up to microsoft. There is no doubt today bing is much more powerful search engine than google.
I love a challenge. It took far fewer than 57 clicks to find the Stevenson quote, but I had the advantage of knowing it was Stevenson thanks to your essay. It's from an essay, "El Dorado," in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1918) 170.
The correct quote, as another poster noted, is from the conclusion of the essay:
"Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour."
Thanks for giving me a little fun in the middle of the day.
Making the connection of a search experience with retail shopping is a stretch. In retail, you are stuck in the store until you get what you looking for to justify the trip. In search, you can bye-bye this search engine and try another search engine in a click. Search expectation and experience can differ drastically from one individual to another. I like the competition and availability of options out there. No one company should dominant.
Not sure if this article is satire, but I hope so. The reason Google came to dominate search is because it provided the most relevant results (both organic and paid). If Bing can beat Google at its own game, then that should bode well for Bing. Of course, providing better organic results means less clicking on paid results (as a percentage), less emphasis on PPC and possibly even smaller paid search budgets (and therefore decreased agency fees). As usual, your articles are about what's in it for you.
Like most other commenters, I do not agree with the satisfaction quotient supposedly encountered by searchers who get desired results only after multiple searches and clicks. (57 clicks, really?) As a consumer, I much prefer the quickest, most relevant result. I go to search engines to find something quickly, and don't have the time to run around chasing after multiple "leads" (aka clicks on diff search results.) As for the search engines and how they make money off this, the conventional wisdom would say that displaying most relevant results quickly would be the least effective way for an engine to monetize their search clicks (fewer clicks on PPC ads per customer, because of more relevant results)... but look what happened to Google when they had the most relevant results? More users of the engine, more advertisers on their keywords, and a higher revenue per search ratio because due to the high relevancy, searchers came to trust the results served up so they clicked on more ads. And then more loyalty to Google due to this trust. So I would say that making it the easiest for the consumer/searcher is the obvious way to go! Going to be interesting to see how this all pans out.
"But my joyous reverie was shattered when I recalled a fundamental lesson of merchandising, which is that by making things too easy for your customers to find, you can doom yourself to certain destitution and ruin."
So.... if the supermarkets all move the milk to the front of the store they will go out of business...? Interesting.
I could almost buy into this line of thinking, and then I realized that one of the biggest and most profitable businesses we have seen got to where they are by giving the customer a number of choices based on what they were looking for, and then sent them out of the store in the direction of what they were looking for.
Yes, that's what Google.com does. They provide a free service that started out not even pretending to try and keep customers on their site. Talk about you upside-down business model...! "Here, take what we have for free, and don't feel you ever have to return if you don't want to.".
As far as ranking in Bing goes, we are one of the few SEO companies that don't pay any attention to ranking. And I see that Bing is starting to send us A LOT of traffic despite this, just like Google and the others do.
The name "Bing" sucks big time and you would THINK MS could have found a better name than that....! But while my personal view is that it's pretty ho-hum and I'm not sure if I like the increased bandwidth it's going to take from sites to show those little previews, it seems to be working so far and that's great.
I just hope that the real name for "Bing" doesn't turn out to be "Sting" in the end.
I forgot to mention, if most people are unhappy with the search results all they have to do is learn how to use quotes.
I know mastering boolean logic is beyond the ability of anyone with less than a PHD or IQ under 160, but with a massive public awareness campaign ("Friends don't let friends search without quotes!") I would say the search satisfaction percentage could greatly increase in a short time.
Unless you're being sarcastic you are either an idiot or being paid by Google.
Hmmmm, thats 60 seconds of reading time i wont get back.
I think the author "Phoned this one in"
The unspoken truth is that Google returns crap results because 99% of the Internet's content is precisely that. Bing wins because it gets to the answer or shows you what you need to rephrase immediately. I like the fact that it's more like Wolfram|Alpha and less like Google, in as much as it's definitely better at getting me my answer - and infinitely better at finding me precisely the image I would like to see.
Let me take a moment to add another log to stoke this fire higher before we start to burn Steve Baldwin in effigy.
To make this correlation to milk and grocery stores was a really poor reach. Steve must not do the shopping in his family, because his local A&P applies the concept of search on signs hanging in each aisle and within his shopping cart children's seat. Search is all around you in the grocery store and you utilize it constantly when you seek something in the store.
For example, on Memorial Day weekend I couldn't find breading mix for chicken wings. In most grocery stores, just as milk is found in far back corner, breading is typically found with spices and preparation mixes. In my local store, they recently moved it and the grocery cart and stores signs alerted me that I could find it in row 8 when it was actually in Row 1. In summary, the store manager clearly had not applied the grocery store equivalent of a 301 or 302 redirect.
What Bing is bringing to the table is a better way to ensure that you don't waste 15 minutes searching for the chicken wing breading in the wrong aisle. The reason we have to search multiple times on Google is because they think Wikipedia is the expert on every subject matter because too much emphasis is placed on links and not enough on reality. Hopefully Bing helps us see less Wikipedia-like results in its search engine and gives us more tangible and useful answers.
I agree with Monica. The fundamental problem with your article is USERS...the AUDIENCE searches. What is fundamentally "broken" is how advertisers traditionally view the web. The paradigm shift is that the web has changed the game. Now advertisers and content providers MUST successfully reach the USER...the AUDIENCE. The web is a user - not advertiser-driven medium. Microsoft ironically has grown to realize this. The future will be driven by targeted segmented audience vs. CPM...and the future is NOW!
Perhaps Bing is flipping the store. Imagine placing the milk POP at the front of the store so people can grab it within seconds of entering. Now let’s put the check out at the back of the store. The stores customers will confront all the same products and signage on their way to the back of the store. Ultimately, giving the customer what they want quicker may attract more people to the store. Nothing is better for increasing conversions than an increase in traffic. That's the whole point of Bing and better search.
Insightful point of view. I actually like the Bing engine for certain things. The image search, for example, is far superior than what Google has to offer. It's faster, richer and has great filtering options. I'm still able to walk down the aisle and see other things as I travel to the back of the store for my milk. Now, however, I can do it faster than I could do on Google. In my opinion, Microsoft brings a little healthy competition to the party which may make search an even better experience. And there's nothing wrong with that.
In our instant-gratification demanding society, quicker is better. Not everyone has the time to browse. If Bing does manage to provide relevant results in half the time Google does, then it will make significant bite out of Google's lead.
You are definitely correct, Steve, about how shoppers invariably pick up more items in a store than they originally intended.
The one benefit of walking those extra steps or clicking around on SERP is the extra calories being burned off. Every bit helps :)
The insight is spot on—we have human behavior no matter how we automate our tasks!
People are naturally curious and enjoy the ride, hence the idea of "surfing."
This isn't about build a better mousetrap. It's about how many ways do we need to find what we're looking for.
Happy surfing!
The idea that 75,000 search results is not equivalent to walking through the grocery store. The scale difference stretches the validity of the anology. Search may not be brken but it certainly needs to be refined so that our journey through the grocerey store might actually take us by something we might find of interest.
I don't buy this take on Bing, or on consumer behavior online. Sure, it probably ranges from user to user, but by and large my experience has been that what people expect and demand these days is IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATiON. And the Internet has actually made people less patient about this in other channels. Assuming Microsoft can deliver the "right result fast" on a regular basis, Bing will steal share from Google. Not everyone values a distraction that takes them away from what they are seeking. If they did, online advertising click through rates would be much higher.
Totally disagree. Progress = efficiency. People want to be more efficient — not sidetracked and duped. You're actually recommending that search engines simply emulate Google and accept that failed multiple queries are part of the game?
I'm impressed by how many responses this article has inspired and amazed by how many responders don't understand the analogy. Billboards work better when traffic is clogged because motorists have more time to notice them, read them, and become influenced by them. Steve Baldwin is implying that when the congestion problem is solved billboards will be less effective. Google may prefer to deliver less efficient search results so that people will be exposed to more ads. Bing has stated they would prefer to reduce the number of searches required and that will therefore reduce the number of ads the user will be exposed to (and that's something those in the ad industry may want to take note of rather than ridicule). Where would you prefer to put your ad dollars, one click and the problem is solved or twenty clicks and the problem is solved? Great article Steve.
I like your thinking Stephen. You win The Janitor's Golden Broom Prize for the week's dumbest idea. Keep it up and you'll be cleaning toilets like me for a living.
Tell someone at Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo or any other company to suppress innovation and see how far you get.
I admit I did not read all of the comments to this article, so I might be repeating someone (my apologies), mainly because I don't have all of the time in the world like our author of this post Steve Baldwin does. Must be nice. When people search they want to find something immediately and instant gratification is mainly what this society is built on. If I want to learn something on a journey I will pick up a good book and pop the cork on a tasty red.
Yeah I played around with Bing and realized it was just a dressed up version of MSN Search