Microsoft Bing Goes Toe-to-Toe Against Google

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In its latest campaign, Microsoft is launching a blind "taste test" of sorts pitting Bing against Google. Bing It On is a side-by-side search engine comparison in which consumers conduct a search that turns up two sets of results. They then select a winner. At the end of the five rounds, they see which search engine they chose for each of the five queries.

A video posted to the Bing It On site depicts random people on the street identifying Google as their preferred search engine, then choosing Bing's search results as better and more relevant.

The search engine survey was conducted by San Diego-based Answers Research using a sampling of nearly 1,000 people, ages 18 and older from across the United States who used a major search engine in the past 30 days. The respondents were not told any company was involved.

Of the participants, 57 percent chose Bing, 30 percent chose Google and 12 percent saw no preference in the results. The survey had a margin of error of 2 percent.

"Google is such a habit, people don't think of the choice of engine they're making," said Bing Director Stephan Weitz. "People have told us they prefer Bing's results at a 2 to 1 margin. We encourage everyone to take the test for themselves to see if they agree."

Today Microsoft is launching the Bing It On sweepstakes which offers prizes including a Microsoft Surface tablet, Xbox 360 with Kinect, Windows Phones and more, just by tweeting. There will also be in-store activations in various Microsoft stores through the upcoming Windows 8 launch. Bing also has launched a tweet campaign.

This story originally appeared in Search Engine Watch.

This article was originally published on Search Engine Watch.