All search engines are very similar at the end of the day. Bing has been trying to get better than Google. It focused more on Instant Answers early on. Duck Duck Go was inspired by that and created a nice ecosystem around building modular Instant Answers through third-party integrations.
The thing that sets one apart from another is really context. You could search for the term 'Cancer' and get a star-sign on Google, but the disease on Bing. Which one is accurate? Does it make that search engine better? Most likely not. What matters is relevance when you search. This is a hard problem to solve, even after it has been solved. So it is a moving target. That is because the amount of data and number of users searching are growing every day.
All the engines have been trying hard to get better at improving Search (Results) Relevance. There is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. You have to understand the context of the query. You may need to auto-correct the query. You need to understand the domain the query is referring to. The type of results that need to be returned for that query. How do you rank those results? Previous searches and actions. Your preferences. Etc. How do you pick 10 blue links in a split-second out of billions of links? These are some of the challenges that all of them face.
Where each engine stands varies significantly with each algorithmic update. Google has been better at relevance for a long time. Bing was better in certain domains like Shopping and Image Search. Duck Duck Go has done a good job of innovating and positioned themselves around security. Whether their results are accurate or not, I'm not sure as I have tried it only a couple of times. They seemed similar overall. In order to compare search engines, you have to look at a lot of types of queries (including tail-end queries), domains and context.
At the moment, Google is still better at relevance. Its image search has gotten better.
As much as I loved to use Bing, I switched back to Google a few years after I left MSFT because I need to use it as a tool to get work done.
All search engines are very similar at the end of the day. Bing has been trying to get better than Google. It focused more on Instant Answers early on. Duck Duck Go was inspired by that and created a nice ecosystem around building modular Instant Answers through third-party integrations.
The thing that sets one apart from another is really context. You could search for the term 'Cancer' and get a star-sign on Google, but the disease on Bing. Which one is accurate? Does it make that search engine better? Most likely not. What matters is relevance when you search. This is a hard problem to solve, even after it has been solved. So it is a moving target. That is because the amount of data and number of users searching are growing every day.
All the engines have been trying hard to get better at improving Search (Results) Relevance. There is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. You have to understand the context of the query. You may need to auto-correct the query. You need to understand the domain the query is referring to. The type of results that need to be returned for that query. How do you rank those results? Previous searches and actions. Your preferences. Etc. How do you pick 10 blue links in a split-second out of billions of links? These are some of the challenges that all of them face.
Where each engine stands varies significantly with each algorithmic update. Google has been better at relevance for a long time. Bing was better in certain domains like Shopping and Image Search. Duck Duck Go has done a good job of innovating and positioned themselves around security. Whether their results are accurate or not, I'm not sure as I have tried it only a couple of times. They seemed similar overall. In order to compare search engines, you have to look at a lot of types of queries (including tail-end queries), domains and context.
At the moment, Google is still better at relevance. Its image search has gotten better.
As much as I loved to use Bing, I switched back to Google a few years after I left MSFT because I need to use it as a tool to get work done.
This says it all "As much as I loved to use Bing, I switched back to Google a few years after I left MSFT..."