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Citigroup Study Says Google More Relevant Than Bing

Citigroup conducted a study comparing 200 queries on Google, Yahoo and Bing. The study found that Google is much more relevant than Bing, in returning relevant results. Google returned the most relevant result 71 percent of the time, compared with Bing at 49 percent of the time and Yahoo 30 percent of the time.

The queries picked were pulled mostly from Google Zeitgeist, Microsoft’s xRank and Yahoo Buzz in the categories of Entertainment, Health, Local, News, Retail, Sports, Travel and Other. Then after running the 200 queries, Citigroup picked the winner based on two criteria:

1) Relevancy of the organic search results; and
2) Robustness of the search experience, which included factors such as image and video inclusion, Search Assist, and Site Breakout.

Here are some of the charts from the study:

Citigroup Search Relevancy Test

Citigroup Search Relevancy Test

Greg covered how many searchers preferred Bing’s look over Google, but said they would stick with Google as the default engine.

For more coverage on this study, see paidContent.org and AllThingsD.

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All Things Digital Bing xRank Citigroup Google Google Zeitgeist Microsoft Microsoft Bing Search engine Search engine optimization Yahoo Buzz Yahoo!
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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.