I recently read a PDF circulated by Howie Schwartz, Internet Marketing Guru, and came across some fascinating information regarding Google and Bing.  Search engines tend to focus on some key aspects of search to make it faster, more effective, and an overall better experience for users.  Considering this, Howie and his team did some studies comparing current Google, Google Caffeine (Google’s amped up version) and Bing.  The results were staggering.

What do Search Engines Focus On?

As stated before search engines tend to focus attention on certain usability aspects to determine how to proceed with future search engines.  These have almost always been determined by Google but Microsoft and Bing have been attempting to rewrite these.  Let’s see how they measure up.

Search Engines Focus

There are four main areas that search engines tend to focus on listed below:

• Speed – How fast results are returned
• Accuracy -  How accurate are the results compared with search terms
• Relevance – How relevant results are in terms of news, new goings-on, etc.
• Comprehensiveness – Do you get a good amount of accurate, relevant, information or just a smattering of it?

Google, Bing, Yahoo!…Who do I choose?

According to Howie’s results Google originally returned more results in less time than Bing and Google Caffeine returned almost twice as many as Google original in less time.  And Google’s results were much more on target for relevance than Bing on both ends.

Based on this information I decided to dig a little deeper and see who else was researching this topic.  Mashable.com found nearly the same results as Howie did…and the same was found across the web.  I have not bothered with my own tests because I trust the resources I use and saw no point in repeating what has already been proven…just good scientific process.

So Will Microsoft Kill Yahoo! and Make Google Official King?

All of this on top of Microsoft’s recent dealings with Yahoo! have made many an individual skeptical as to where to turn for search.  Some still argue that Bing is better…but much of it relates to image search and honestly how many of us do major image searching?

With Bing’s poor results on search times compared with results returned and their relevancy, it seems almost a given that acquiring Yahoo! will simply kill the only search engine that give Google any real competition.

So Google will remain my search engine of choice and I will continue my SEO efforts accordingly.  It may be the wrong course of action but based on my research if you are doing anything different, your site and your clients sites will suffer greatly in the end.