Bing vs. Google

Shopping

Online shopping is awesome for many reasons. It proves the joy novelty-proof joy of getting parcels in the post, you don't have to trawl around shops all day and it's more often than not a cheaper way to do about business.

Test Shopping Search: Nokia N97

Google came out with about 2,000 results for the search in its shopping panel. After flicking through about 40 pages of Google results the items for sale started to be largely accessories which is arguably not as relevant to our search. However we felt that the sheer volume of the results outweighed this fact and if you're crazy enough to be looking for an N97 and not an iPhone then you may well be interested in the accessories too. The cheapest we found the handset for in the Google search was $400 from Ellectorllc.com


In a stark contrast to Google's epic 2,000 search results produced Bing pulled back just nine. The cheapest N97 on sale was $546, considerably more than Google's cheapest, even with the cash back feature Bing provides. Something that Bing did provide though was some additional relation search options for the Nokia N97 such as software, ringtones and manual. These are nice touches, but they don't make up for the price difference in this particular search.

Test Shopping Search: Radeon HD 4890 1GB

There's nothing quite like the joy of buying a graphics card upgrade, plugging it in and watching all your favourite games take on a new level of visual splendour. We punched in Radeon HD 4890 1GB to the US version of both search engines to see which could net us the best upgrade.

Once again Google came out on top in terms of quantity. It had 650 results though again they started to get somewhat watered down after about 40 pages or so when a lot of complete systems built using the GPU start appearing. Filtering the results from cheapest to most expensive showed us that the best deal Google had found was one for $187.68 from eWiz.com.


Bing had just four pages of results which equated to about 60 options. However, some of the top results had multiple sellers for each item and listed them in a price comparison style. In addition to the price, this built-in price comparison page shows the amount of cashback offered on each item and whether the website offers free shipping or not, both of which can be deal makers when shopping online. In addition to these welcome touches, Bing also lists the different graphics card partners such as Asus and Gigabyte down at the side of page so if you had a particular brand name in mind then you filter them out with a click.