Software Testing Blog

As consumers, we’re loyal to our brands.  Whether it’s Mac vs. PC, Nike vs. Adidas, or Starbucks vs. Dunkin Donuts, we like what we like.  And it’s tough to convince us that some other product/service/website is as good as our favorite.  Companies go to great lengths and expense to try and alter our preferences (who could forget the Pepsi Challenge?), but all too often, we walk away feeling marketed to (read as: manipulated).

Last week, Microsoft launched it’s new search decision engine – Bing – amid great fanfare.  And one enterprising MSFT employee named Michael Kordahi launched an app that he calls BlindSearch, which offers a “taste test” of the top three search engines.  Simply enter in a search term and BlindSearch will pull the results from Google, Bing and Yahoo into one interface… then you can vote for your favorite based only on the quality of the search results.

As Michael notes, this isn’t a perfect test… after all, we choose our search engine based on more than just the results (speed, overall user experience, number & placement of ads, other filters and features).  But when we search, we’re generally looking for the most accurately matched results.  While there are a lot of ways to perform user preference and usability testing — surveys, focus groups, A/B analytics — this is an interesting and entertaining experiment and a cool way to test your own preferences.

Take the BlindSearch Test and then come back and tell us which search engine you actually prefer!