The Schwartz Reportby Jeffrey Schwartz, Executive Editor
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I Failed the Bing Challenge
When I attended the grand opening of the Microsoft Store at the Walt Whitman Mall in Huntington, N.Y., I asked for one of the T-shirts that were being given to attendees. The man guarding the shirts told me I could have one only if I took the Bing Challenge.
It was just like the Pepsi Challenge back in the 1980s, in which people would drink from two different cups of cola, one Pepsi and the other Coke, while blindfolded. After drinking from both cups, the tester would say which tasted better. While I wasn't blindfolded for the Bing Challenge, I was instructed to put in five different searches and say which sets of results I thought were more useful.
One set of results was in the left pane and the other on the right. However, when choosing the sets of results I thought were more precise, I had no idea whether I was choosing Bing or Google.
I decided to search for articles or blog entries on various topics that I've written using my name and the topic of a given article. I did this five times and selected the set of results I thought gave a better list of my articles or blogs.
At the end of the test it gave me the tally. It turns out that after selecting the five search results, I blindly chose Google each time. As I walked away, I helped myself to two T-shirts.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on October 01, 2012 at 11:59 AM