How Bing can beat Google

Will Microsoft’s $100 million ad campaign and re-launched name move Google users over to Bing? Look, I love Microsoft’s search engine. I commonly say to my kids when they ask me a question “why don’t you go Live it?” while they roll their eyes at me. So the name change lets me say “go Bing it” with a straight face.

 

But the ads won’t switch Google users over. Here’s why.

 

Search engines are like credit cards

Most people in the U.S. have multiple credit cards, including both Visa and Mastercard. When you purchase something, you could whip out any of your cards. They are sitting in your wallet, side-by-side. If you pay your balance off each month, there’s really no difference.

But you probably have a favorite card. Why? Because mentally it’s not worth the extra effort each time to decide “Hmmm…which card to I feel like using today?”. It isn’t worth rubbing two brain cells together so you just select by habit.

How did it become your favorite? There’s lots of possible reasons: maybe it had the lowest interest rate, maybe your other card was maxed out. Whatever. You started using it for a good reason. Now, you just don’t want to decide each time so you stick with the same card.

Making decisions is hard work. In practice, we try to avoid making decisions. We take the same route to work every morning. We get the same haircut. We order the same thing at the restaurant. How painful is it when your spouse says “what should we eat tonight?” Ack! Decisions!

Search engines are like that. Two shiny pieces of plastic – Bing and Google – snuggled up together in your wallet. You need to locate something on the web. Both, that morning, equally lie in front of you. Which do you choose? You choose the one you chose yesterday.

 

But! The ads say it’s a “Decision Engine”!

I know. The ads make you think Bing has the better search engine because it’s a “Decision Engine”. That will last about three minutes after you run to check out Bing and see that the results are not that much better than Google’s. The feature that lets you preview a webpage before jumping to doesn’t give you enough information to decide whether to jump to that website. It’s the same Live search engine with a few bells and whistles.

And so, consumers will feel disappointed. They won’t have time to form new habits. They’ll go back to doing what they were doing before.

So far, the results look promising: Bing (formerly Live) jumped to 12.1% of all search pages returned, up from 9.1% two weeks ago. A whopping 3% increase in market share. I’m sure Google execs are quaking in their Birkenstocks.

Is this the start of an upward trend? Or just a blip on the radar? My opinion: it’s a blip. The ads will naturally drive curious visitors to check out Bing. And I’m sure they will even win a few converts, not so much because the search results are better, but because the image on the search page changes each time and looks pretty snazzy. But there’s not enough that’s better to hang around for.

 

The myth of better

It’s a strange thing. People need to feel good about what they’re doing. They don’t want to hear that Google and Bing are just as good. They WANT to believe they are using the superior search engine.

There’s a cool blind search engine that will PROVE Google, Bing and Yahoo all return similar results. But the consumer mind isn’t logical. It doesn’t like indecision. It likes confidence and it likes to feel it has made the “right” decision. And so it is opposed to any evidence that says they’re really about the same. Consumers hate that. They want to believe there’s a difference so they can go back to making habitual decisions.

There’s a long history of great ads that increase liking for a product, but don’t change habitual behavior.

 

Great ads don’t change behavior

MasterCard began running its award-winning “Priceless” ads in 1997. You’ve seen the Priceless ads, right? How much do you think these ads, which everyone knows and have been parodied more than almost any other ad in the world, moved market share? Come on, guess.

MasterCard’s market share has increased to 31% in 2008, up from about 25% in 2000. A success you say?

Perhaps the ads had something to do with their success. But in the credit card industry, huge swings of market share come from the number of banks who are issuing your credit cards. In fact, banks are so important that in the late 1990′s both Visa and MasterCard blocked their 7,000 issuing banks (most banks issue both) from also issuing American Express cards. While MasterCard’s market share was increasing, Amercian Express market share declined to 12% from 20%.

If you really think about it, would the Priceless ads make you grab your MasterCard instead of your Visa when you’re shopping at Target? Habits are not that easy to change.

And that’s why the ads won’t work. People already think they’ve found a superior search engine. They are willing to let go of that belief if you can show them it’s better. But they don’t want to go back into decision mode. If what they see at Bing.com doesn’t convince them right away, it’s painful to remain in a state of doubt for long. They will revert to what has given them comfort for the past five years.

 

How to beat Google

Microsoft needs to target specific types of searches. Notice how Wikipedia has become one of the most popular websites because it’s perfect for certain searches – when you want to get a quick briefing on a subject like World War II or the Swine Flu. You know Wikipedia is a good starting point. Wikipedia didn’t try to compete with Google for all searches – just a certain type of search.

So what is that certain type of search Microsoft could compete on? How about education? Educators want their students to be safe online and are always cautious about letting them stray too far on the web. But what if there was a version of Bing for educators, where teachers could log on in their search for classroom resources. They could rate which websites they found valuable, and for which subject and for which grade level. Other teachers could search based on those criteria. And school districts could program their browsers so students could only access the pre-approved websites. This would solve an important problem in education.

Anything that is educator-approved is also safe for children and families, and so this collaborative approach to reviewing websites by trusted education professionals would also create a safe search engine for families and home schoolers.

So, I love the creative ads. But history shows people can love your ads and still use your competitors’ products. If Microsoft would make the worthy investments to create a search engine that leads you to family-safe and student-safe websites, now that would be Priceless.

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