Bing’s brand problem: People prefer Google regardless of search results

Here’s some disconcerting news for Microsoft: It may not matter how good Bing really is because most consumers will always assume it’s not as good as Google. Search Engine Land reports that a new study conducted by SurveyMonkey has found that most consumers will prefer any search results that have the Google label on top of them, even if they’re actually the search results pulled up by Bing. When given a choice between Bing search results that are labelled as Google and Google search results labeled as Bing, respondents chose the Google-labeled results by a ratio of roughly 2 to 1. When users were presented with the search results without any labels on them, Google’s lead over Bing shrinks dramatically as 57% chose Google and 43% chose Bing. The study concludes that consumers are “biased toward Google as a result of the brand,” which has been a major reason that Bing has not yet made significant inroads against it.