Thank you to Bing for sponsoring this article. Try the Bing It On Challenge challenge and experience why in blind tests, people preferred Bing over Google for the web’s top searches.*
by Robert Duffer, Dad’s Editor
It was a windy, rainy day just outside Chicago. And with a car in the shop, there was no place to go. So my kids and I took to the computer.
The Bing It On Challenge helped us not only find something to do, but we spent a fun 10 minutes comparing search engines. The way the challenge works, you simply search for five different things, and the challenge shows you unbranded side-by-side results. Which is better? You decide. I personally was surprised at the differences in the results from the two search engine powerhouses.
We started by comparing Bing and Google in a search for “Rainy Day Activities for Dads and Kids”. There were lots of results from both Bing and Google, and the best part was that it led my kids and I and down the path of more specific searches. Games! Crafts! Do it yourself rocket building! The do it yourself rockets were unfortunately a bust, as on that search, the few we found would need more materials and time than we had. (Bing won for the sparks to our imagination however). But when we put in the keywords “Crafts for Dads and Daughters”, it was fun looking at, then comparing notes on, the side-by-side craft results. Bing’s results had photos, which got my daughter excited right away, and the Bing results also introduced us to a lot of cool-looking father-daughter websites that we bookmarked for later. I sure know where to go at birthday time. The model cars that dads could build with their kids was almost as far out of reach as the rockets, and we knew that with one search left, we needed to find something that would satisfy us all.
In the end, thanks to the Bing challenge, we discovered a lot of Dads and Kids cooking websites and decided to make a lunchtime production extraordinaire.
It was fun poring over the recipes, and looking for just the right one that would satisfy both my daughter and her younger brother. Once again, Bing won the challenge because of the engaging pictures and the websites that we don’t think we would have found otherwise. We made soup and some fun little tuna pizzas with recipes that had steps that both kids could both help with.
And it was even more fun when my daughter volunteered to do the dishes after cooking time. Thanks Bing! Rainy Day success!
Take the Bing It On Challenge yourself to find out which search results you like best.
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Thank you to Bing and Technorati for being sponsors of this article. All opinions expressed here are my own.
*Based on a comparison of web search results pane only; excludes ads, Bing’s Snapshot and Social Search panes and Google’s Knowledge Graph. Learn about the study.