We’ve been paying so much attention to Google Search that our treatment of other search engines may not look evenhanded. Competition is good for everyone. At the moment, Bing, Google’s worthy competitor from the Microsoft stable, is lagging behind in market share, but please don’t tell anyone at Microsoft that Bing cannot compete with Google head to head.

Recently, when Satya Nadella took over the CEO of Microsoft some experienced SEO analysts did not forget to point out that Search veterans were now heading Google (Larry Page), Microsoft (Bing), as well as Yahoo (Marissa Meyer). It has not been lost on many that Nadella once headed the unit which oversaw Bing as well.

My money is on Microsoft to invest enough resources on the Bing team that they always remain a close competitor to Google in terms of the quality of the Search results, if not market share. Bing offers plenty of value-added free tools for the searcher, which are not limited to Keyword Research and Webmaster Tools.

Bing also powers Search for Yahoo!, and together with Yahoo!, offers the combined Yahoo!Bing network for PPC advertising on the web. Even the combination doesn’t come anywhere near Google on both organic Search as well as PPC Ads, but still they remain in play as a serious act in town.

DOES BING OFFER SUPERIOR SEARCH?
This brings us to the question: Are there any areas in which Bing offers a Search experience superior to that of Google?

In my limited experience, there are a few.

For instance, Bing offers conversion to bitcoin, though Google doesn’t.

Not sure how relevant it is, but given the popularity graph of bitcoin, I’m guessing Google may soon offer the service.

Versus

Anything else? Sure, I noticed that when you search for books, Bing offers a superior experience. For one, it’s possible in Bing to return a results page without the presence of Amazon.com.

I’ve not seen this happen in Google.

Also, I noticed that Bing always picks up the average reader rating of a book from Amazon.com and all other booksellers in the results page.

But I noticed that Google doesn’t pick up the average reader ratings from Amazon.com, though it may do so from other booksellers:

Are we done? Not yet. I was merely trying to highlight that there are some areas in which Bing Search results could be superior. Let’s continue our research some more in the next post.

e.o.m.

More nuggets from I’m Feeling Lucky to help us understand Sergey Brin better. Douglas’ experience with running the first set of banner ads for Google made him realize how much data driven the company’s founders were. Google had barter arrangements with Netscape and Go2Net. So the marketing department needed to come up with banner ads. “How many can you have by tomorrow?” Sergey asked. “Why don’t you start with a 100.” Douglas threw himself at the task, roping in a copy writer and an artist. All the banners were critiqued. The comments from the founders never seemed to end, until one fine day, Sergey again said: “We should try a bunch of these out. And see how they perform. We are wasting time by not running them and getting the ultimate feedback — clickthroughs.

Eventually the ads began to run, and Douglas says the pressure on him seemed to ease as he started the practise of plugging in data about which ads were attracting more CTRs into a spreadsheet, and hand-delivering them to Larry and Sergey. He would pull ads which were not working, and replace them with new banners. “I became a convert to the power of data persuasiveness,” Douglas writes.

Google is now justly famous for A/B testing its headlines and design. Its popular Google Analytics tool, offered free to website owners, even features a fairly extensive A/B testing function.

HOW A/B TESTING BEGAN AT GOOGLE
Wired magazine ran an article on the origins of A/B testing at Google some time ago. The rotation of banner ads narrated above by Douglas Edwards is of course not included in the history of the evolution of A/B testing at the search giant. This is what the Wired article said about it:
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At Google — whose rise as a Silicon Valley powerhouse has done more than anything else to spread the A/B gospel over the past decade — engineers ran their first A/B test on February 27, 2000. They had often wondered whether the number of results the search engine displayed per page, which then (as now) defaulted to 10, was optimal for users. So they ran an experiment. To 0.1 percent of the search engine’s traffic, they presented 20 results per page; another 0.1 percent saw 25 results, and another, 30.

Due to a technical glitch, the experiment was a disaster. The pages viewed by the experimental groups loaded significantly slower than the control groups, causing the relevant metrics to tank. But that in itself yielded a critical insight — tenths of a second could make or break user satisfaction in a precisely quantifiable way. Soon Google tweaked its response times and allowed real A/B testing to blossom. In 2011 the company ran more than 7,000 A/B tests on its search algorithm. Amazon.com, Netflix, and eBay are also A/B addicts, constantly testing potential site changes on live (and unsuspecting) users.
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‘DON’T INVOLVE EVERYONE; IT’S A WASTE OF TIME’
The UI team was debating names and designs for the browser button, a piece of code that allowed users to add Google search links to their browsers, writes Douglas. The mailing list had swelled to 10. Sergey found it ridiculous. Instead of exhaustive user testing and internal deliberations, Sergey said Google should just put up the service and test it when they get a chance. “Don’t forget. We can change it at the drop of a hat,” he said. ‘Launch first, iterate later’ was Sergey’s perspective. Then he expounded his philosophy. “I don’t think we should have any meetings about a project like this,” he said, “or any group emails except the one to users announcing the launch. Having everyone involved in every issue is not a good use of anyone’s time.”

 (To be continued. Vignettes taken from the book I’m Feeling Lucky by Douglas Edwards)

Last year when Jeff Bezos was interviewed by Charlie Rose for his 60 Minutes TV show, one of the key takeaways from it, besides the sneak preview offered on Air Prime, Amazon’s forthcoming drone-based home delivery service, was Bezos’ defence of his business practices, especially with regard to the book publishing industry.

He said, “The internet is disrupting every media industry. The future is happening to book selling. Amazon is not happening to book selling.” Responding specifically to the complaints about Amazon, Bezos said: “Complaining is not a strategy.”

I was reminded of this today when I made a casual review of several eBookseller sites, which sell a wide selection of eBooks for buyers around the world. One can very well say that when it comes to sale of eBooks, they are indeed competitors to Amazon.

Why are eBook sellers losing money from potential customers?
I did a very basic comparison of these sites to the Kindle eBooks section of Amazon.com. It was shocking to see these sites leave money on the table because they haven’t got their search function right.

Why are they doing it? If they don’t take care of their own interests, can these sites then complain against Amazon for its competitive instincts?

I adopted a simple methodology. I opened The New York Times fiction bestseller list for eBooks from a couple of weeks ago. I had already downloaded this sometime ago for a comparative study. I went there again and randomly picked up a few bestsellers.

First stop, Diesel eBooks (diesel-ebooks.com). I searched for the eBook Innocence (by Dean Koontz), a current NYT bestseller. This is what I got:

It was not there in the first page of 20 results. In fact the first page is entirely filled with adult fiction eBooks, many of them offered free. Please note that the search defaulted to bestselling.

I made the same search in the Amazon Kindle eBookstore to get the following result:

The NYT bestseller was returned as the top result, with Sort by Relevance as the default search method.

I went back to Diesel, and this time searched for the full title plus the author name. It turns out that the eBook is actually available in Diesel eBookstore, and that too at least for Indian buyers, at a much discounted price to that of Amazon:

On digging further, I found that the title is returned as the 25th result in Diesel when you just search for ‘Innocence’.

Twenty-fifth result! Just imagine. No why would any eBookseller offer a full page of adult eBook fiction as the search results page for Innocence, and return a free eBook as the top result? Shouldn’t its internal search default to relevance like Amazon’s does, and give weightage to an eBook listed as a bestseller by the prestigious NYT ? Scott Redford of Diesel, are you listening?  

Why is eBooks.com ignoring Linda Lael Miller? 
Next stop, eBooks.com. I searched for Linda Lael Miller. Her work Big Sky Secrets is currently an NYT bestseller.
But you wouldn’t know if you searched for her name in eBooks.com:

So I went to Amazon and did the same search:

They know a thing or two about relevance. The search for Linda Lael Miller returns her current NYT eBook bestseller as the top result in Amazon, and not the 20th result as it’s in eBooks.com. Now, how many people abandoned their search for Big Sky Secrets in eBooks.com because it didn’t list it as a top offering from the author?
Shouldn’t the search algorithm of the site be changed to give some weightage to the NYT bestseller list? Stephen Cole of eBooks.com, are you listening?

Why can’t eBookmall.com not search for full title and author? 
See what happened when I searched for the full title and author name at ebookmall.com:

I turned disappointed to Amazon.com even though as a matter of fact, I want small eBooksellers to thrive, and want to purchase eBooks from them, even at a slight loss in price. But it seems they are not interested in helping someone like me.

Amazon recognised the search for the full title and author name of the bestseller, but was not very truthful when it told me that only the hardcover was available. On clicking the result, I could find the Kindle eBook version as well.
So Amazon is not perfect, but still it takes you where you want to go.

I returned to ebookmall.com and performed one more search. This time, just for the eBook title. It turns out the eBook was actually available there:

My message to the promoters of eBookmall is simple. You’ve got work to do to review your search function. Otherwise, you are losing out on potential sales.

Infibeam too has to improve 
What about India? Infibeam (infibeam.com), co-founded by former Amazon employee Vishal Mehta, offers a good selection of eBooks. But here too, I found that they could improve upon their search function a bit more.
Look what I got when I searched for Laura Lael Miller in Infibeam:

Her current bestseller Big Sky Secrets returned as the 30th result. That needs improvement. EBooksellers have to give additional weightage to NYT eBook bestseller lists in their search algorithms and increase public awareness that they do sell these eBooks in their stores. Otherwise visitors to your sites will return disappointed, and you will continue to complain against Amazon.com. Remember, as Bezos said, “Complaining is not a strategy at all.”