Bing Takes Off in Canada
Recent studies by Hitwise reveal that Bing produces the highest percentage of successful searches in Canada, with a success rate over 10% higher than Google (Bing=78.7%, Google=67.6%). It has been speculated that this is because Microsoft took the time to thoroughly crawl Canadian sites, paid attention to the French speaking Canadians (roughly 25% of the population), and found ways to isolate sites that have proven interesting to Canadians. While it is obvious that on a much larger scale this would be extremely difficult and time consuming, it does prove that Bing’s basic model can, and does, work.
Could it be that focusing on Canada was a strategy to exemplify and demonstrate Bing’s capabilities? In 2008, Canada held an 85% broadband penetration, which is one of the best in the world. However, with a relatively small population, 33.5 million, the task of crawling all Canadian websites and tailoring a search engine to its citizens is not overly ambitious. The benefits are clear; you get the good publicity of being the most successful search engine in one of the world’s leading tech savvy economies, you prove your search engine has substance to back up its hype, and most importantly, you win over the hearts of Canadians.
By now you might have guessed that I myself am a proud Canadian. So, at the risk of sounding ethnocentric and arrogant, I will consider some other options. Firstly, it could be that Bing is treating most countries the same, and due to time constraints alone, some countries have not been indexed and specialized as entirely as Canada. It could also be because other search engines, mainly Google and Yahoo, haven’t directed as much attention at Canada due to its smaller demographic, giving Bing and edge up. The complexity of searches between the US, Canada and the UK ad fairly similar, although Canadians seem to lag behind the US slightly with more 1-2 word searches. Regardless of what the explanation is, the fact that Bing has worked for Canadians means that, eventually, it could work for everyone.
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