Inspired by Mark Littlewood ’s post at The Business Leaders Network on “Bing vs Google” and Alex Kelleher’s post on analysing the “Google alphabet“, here’s what the two search engines have to say about South Africa. In short, we’re looking at the “auto-complete” feature offered by each search engine. It’s a drop-down list of the most searched for terms that appears as you enter each letter of the search phrase.
Bing’s results
We’ll start with Bing’s results:
- aol, amazon, amazon.com
- bing, bank of america, best buy
- craigslist, cnn, comcast.net
- dictionary, disney channel, dictionary.com
- ebay, espn, expedia
- facebook, facebook.com, fox news
- google, gmail. gmail.com
- hotmail, hi5, home depot
- irs.gov, itunes, imdb
- jcpenney, juno, java
- kohls, kelly blue book, kmart
- lowes, lyrics, limewire
- myspace, mapquest, myspace.com
- netflix, nascar, noaa
- orbitz, office depot, orkut
- pogo, pandora, pogo.com
- qvc, qvc.com, quotes
- realtor.com, runescape, recipes
- southwest airlines, sears, sam’s club
- target, tmz, twitter
- utube, usps, us bank
- verizon wireless, verizon central, verizon.net
- www.google.com, walmart, weather
- xm radio, xbox, x17
- yahoo, youtube, yahoo.com
- zip codes, zillow, zillow.com
True to form, as identified by Mark Littlewood, the results are exactly the same as for any other country… I also found it a little ironic that slapped across Bing’s home page for the South African search was a breathtaking picture of Turquoise Lake, in… Clark National Park, Alaska, USA. There are plenty of spectacular images of South Africa, thank you very much!
Oh, and while Micorosft owns bing.co.za, they don’t use it prefering to redirect users to the .com address.
Google’s Results
- absa internet banking, absa, autotrader.co.za
- beeld, bid or buy, british airways
- computicket, career junction, currency converter
- discovery health, dstv, discovery
- edgars, exclusive books, eskom
- facebook, facebook login, fnb
- gmail, gumtree, gumtree cape town
- hotmail, hi fi corporation, home affairs
- incredible connection, iol, itunes
- junkmail, jobmail, jobs
- kalahari.net, kulula, kulula air
- lotto results, lotto, lotto sa results
- makro, mango airlines, mtn
- news24, nedbank, nu metro
- one time airlines, old mutual, outdoor wearhouse
- pnet, private property, powerball lotto results
- quotes, qatar airways, quotes about life
- rapport, remax, remax properties
- ster kinekor, sars efiling, standard bank
- twitter, telkom, tiger woods
- unisa, unisa courses, university of johannesburg
- vodacom, vodacom4me, vodacome4me.co.za
- www.facebook.com, weather sa, webmail
- xe, xstrata, xbox 360
- youtube, yahoo mail, yahoo
- z83 form, zeda car sales, z83
Quite lekker, eh! Draw whatever conclusions you want about the actual content of the local “auto-complete” results from Google for South Africa but one thing’s for sure, I know which search engine I’ll be using next to search for South African content.
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