As a person whose work revolves around the internet, search engines play an important and integral part of my daily workflow. And for past several years, I have been almost exclusively using Google Search, along with a whole host of Google Products in my work as well as personal life.
However, lately, I have begun to feel that quality of search results in Google has begun to suffer, with an over emphasis being put on local search results eg. while searching for review of a particular service, most of the initial pages are filled with results from websites like Justdial and similar directories or Google’s own Business listings, which although provide contact details of the local reseller of the service, but add little value for someone looking for the review of the service, before deciding, whether or not to go with it!
Add to that, search display page of Google seems to have slowed down over the years. I am not sure whether it is just my connection which is acting this way, but Google just doesn’t feels fast anymore!
In comparison, Bing Search seems to deliver a lot more relevant results (although their suggestions for alternate search terms are at times grossly irrelevant) and also it seems faster than Google!
I guess this is in part due to the fact that Google is using HTTPS while Bing is still using HTTP, but as an end user, secure connection hardly matters to me while using something like web search. However what does matters is the accurate search results and how quickly they are delivered to me.
So as an experiment, on my workstation, I have switched Firefox and Chrome (browsers I use most of the time) to use Bing Search and I will be using it for a week, to see how it fares and whether I can continue using it or am I being forced to switch back to Google for some if not all of the searches.
Next Monday, I will report back with the results of this little experiment of mine and also let you know, whether I decide to stick with Bing for the time being or whether I am switching back to Google.
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