As Bing, Yahoo and other search engines scratch and claw to dig into Google’s enormous market share, their biggest challenge is the need to get the general public to break the habit of automatically & unconsciously turning to Google any time they need to find something.

But is it really just a habit? Or is Google really a better search engine than the others?

The answer is – both. It is true that even if all search engines were on the same level, people are completely locked in to the Google habit. But all search engines are definitely not on the same level. Google is light years ahead of the others. Here’s one irony-filled example which shows how true this statement is.

Put Your Irony Cap On Before Reading This

Here’s the scoop. Microsoft owns the Windows operating system, the Internet Explorer web browser, and Bing. In the summer of 2015, they made updates to Windows & Explorer which included a not-so-subtle attempt to increase Bing’s search market share.

• In the case of Windows, they released Windows 10, which includes a search box at the bottom left of your screen, which allows you to conduct a web search. This web search, not surprisingly, is channelled to Bing, and not Google.

• Microsoft pretty much dumped Explorer and replaced it with a new browser called Edge. If you open up Microsoft Edge, you’ll immediately see a search box where you can either enter a url, or conduct a search. Similar to Windows, this search is conducted in Bing.

When I first saw this, I thought – cool. I was liking the look and feel of Windows 10, and I was curious about the new Edge web browser. So I went to Edge, and searched “advantages of microsoft edge”.

Naturally, I expected to see loads of links telling me why I should start using Microsoft Edge regularly. Instead, I saw this Bing result, where the first 7 links had absolutely nothing to do with the Microsoft Edge browser!

I think we can all agree that this is a lousy result page. None of the first 7 listings have anything whatsoever to do with what I was looking for. Bing was not understanding what I was really searching for. It simply took the words in my query, and matched it up with web pages whose title tags contained those same words.

But, on the bright side, it piqued my interest enough that I headed on over to our trusted friend Google, and searched for the same thing. And, bingo! (pardon the pun). As you can see in the screenshot below, every single search result is a spot-on match for the information that I was looking for!

So let’s recap.

Microsoft Windows, Edge & Bing are all supposed to work in tandem to increase Bing’s market share. But if you search in Bing for reasons to use Edge, it gives you virtually no good information at all.

Google, on the other hand, would love to crush Bing, which naturally means that they don’t want anyone using Edge. They want you to use Chrome (which is Google’s own web browser). But if you go to Google (and to Chrome, for that matter) and search for reasons to use Edge, they give you boatloads of information about why you should hop on the Edge bandwagon right away!

What do we learn from this? Clearly, Google is not just a habit. It is by far the better search engine. Bing (and other search engines) are still relying heavily on matching up the search query with the words in given page’s content & title tag. Google, on the other hand, is light years ahead of others at understanding what information you are looking for, and what results will best answer that question – even if there isn’t an exact match between the words you searched and the words on the results page.

So, at least for the time being, don’t break the habit. Google it.