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Very Hot SE Question for SE gurus...

by Kunle Olomofe
8 replies
  • SEO
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Can anyone explain (with facts) why google and bing (and other SEs) give such different results with regard to number of pages when you search for the exact same terms?

E.G. -- when I search for "free ebooks" google throws up 12,000,000 results. bing throws up a giant 30,000,000 results. "star wars" on google: 81,000,000, on bing: 135,000,000. Other searches I have tried can be as far as 1,250 results on google and over 100,000,000 results on bing!

Why these disparities? Who's blowing smoke up my rear? Google or bing?

Thanks in advance for any on point replies!

Kunle Olomofe
#gurus #hot #question
  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    Depends how you are searching for a start - are you just entering the words star wars or are you entering an exact search term as in using quotes - "star wars"?
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    • Profile picture of the author Stephen Crooks
      Just because a webpage might contain the phrase "star wars" or "free ebooks" doesn't mean that Google or the others would deem it relevant enough for their index. Each search engine has it's own algorithm at the end of the day.
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      • Profile picture of the author Kunle Olomofe
        Originally Posted by Steve Crooks View Post

        Just because a webpage might contain the phrase "star wars" or "free ebooks" doesn't mean that Google or the others would deem it relevant enough for their index. Each search engine has it's own algorithm at the end of the day.
        Steve, yup that makes sense, but... google shows 17,000 or so results for one search term and bing shows 100,000,000+ results for the exact same term... oh by the way yahoo also shows 1,000 pages... these results are so scarily far apart that I had to investigate further.

        By the way, I agree that each SE has their own algorithm and term some pages relevant while others may not be to them, but while I can't possibly view 100 million pages, I've dug through quite a lot of the results shown by bing and they have all been relevant, I'm yet to find a non-relevant page, so I guess I'm just wondering why google would consider relevant pages not relevant and show up far less results than it "should"?

        I'm asking this since I haven't ever really heard this discussed, just want to pin this one down if possible, also especially since I want to use some of this info in my advertising material and don't want to use inaccurate data.

        Cheers,

        Kunle
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        • Profile picture of the author alfredthomson
          Google only displays data which is unique and has no repetition. it may also deleted the non-functional sites from its index which are being displaced by bing. lastly bing must be displaying result of where ever it finds that keyword and Google is only displaying relative results.
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          • Profile picture of the author Kunle Olomofe
            Originally Posted by alfredthomson View Post

            Google only displays data which is unique and has no repetition. it may also deleted the non-functional sites from its index which are being displaced by bing. lastly bing must be displaying result of where ever it finds that keyword and Google is only displaying relative results.
            Hi Alfred,

            Yeah that sounds accurate and I've considered all these points. But after investigating bing as I've said, I find that many of the pages I have found so far ARE relevant and functional as for bing showing up repetitions, I'm not sure that's the case either, many of the pages I've seen are from different sites and not blatant repetitions, perhaps with some similarities in some ways but all the same still different.

            Still, I think you make some good points... I think bing shows up a more realistic picture though if these points are totally accurate since in these cases I'm more interested in coverage of these words and not just what a bot sees as highly relevant, the latter's important but I want to know how widely these phrases are used AS WELL as seeing relevant pages.

            Cheers,

            Kunle
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  • Profile picture of the author Kunle Olomofe
    hi jazbo,

    I'm searching with quotes on both SEs. e.g. "star wars" on google and "star wars" on bing, I get different results from both SEs. The same applies to all my other searches with quotes. What gives?

    cheers,

    Kunle
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  • Profile picture of the author christopherNV
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    • Profile picture of the author Kunle Olomofe
      Originally Posted by christopherNV View Post

      the simple answer would be two different search engines from two different companies... that is why they are different.

      if that answer isn't enough, you'd have to ask a software engineer at both google and microsoft and I doubt they are going to give away the secret sauce that makes each search engine tick.
      You're right Christoper, that answer isn't enough, I have taken your advice and contacted bing directly, searching for contact info for google.

      I'm not asking bing for any secrets just an official answer as to why they show up millions of pages while others show just a few thousand, and if I get google I'll ask why they show just a few thousand pages when bing shows millions... I'm not sure if that's asking for secrets to be divulged but these guys serve us (right?) and I want to know which results I can trust, is that asking too much? I guess I'll find out IF I get responses.

      Thanks for your input,

      Kunle
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  • Profile picture of the author carterstory
    Google and Bing use different algorythms to report back their searches. Bing may report back on only pages including "star wars" where as google may report back with pages containing "star" & "wars".

    I tend to think that Bing is blowing smoke, because they have issues indexing sites.
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