Google vs Bing: Searching For Coffee Shops On iPhone

I like to drink coffee and fortunately for me there is no shortage of coffee shops in the area. Infact, there are no less than six coffee shops on the block where the Outrider Sydney office is located.

So to satisfy my curiousity I wanted to compare mobile search results on Google vs Bing when looking for “coffee shop cremorne” on the iPhone. How do the search engine results look and perform on iPhone and if I was searching would I actually find a coffee shop?

Google Search on the iPhone

Google results look familiar to the results that you would get on the web browsing from a laptop. Google’s text is small which allows it to fit more results into the screen. What comprises the organic results are websites, a block for local listings complete with map, clickable phone numbers and opening hours. There are also a few relevant videos and there is a block of paid ads at the very bottom.

Google helps the searcher out with the ‘Google Suggest’ query suggestion product making searches that bit faster.

Overall, Google performs well on the GUI front – its fast, easy to use and does look nice. But, apparently there is only one coffee shop in the entire area and I need to walk about 2 kms down to Spit Junction to get my caffeine fix.

But if I click on the ‘Local’ tab at the top I’m given a bunch of local listings, some of which are really helpful. So right now, the search is only partially helpful.

Bing on the iPhone

Visually, Bing looks a little bit bland and as a default the text size is fairly big – bigger than the results on a normal web browser. Also, for local searches Bing requires you to add your location.

Bing doesn’t have the rich local listings, maps, videos or related search suggestions that Google offer. When you click on a link Bing opens that link up in a new page which might be confusing to some people. You’ll see the ‘local’ tab but its not clickable for my localised search.

Results wise, Bing shows six organic results before I have to click through on the next page of results. Out of six results for “coffee shop cremorne” only one was relevant. The other five results thought I wanted to buy a coffee machine. Also, slight mispellings of suburb name totally throw Bing’s results. My search for a coffee shop would lead me to think that there is next to nowhere in Cremorne to buy a cafe latte!

And the winner is…

Currently, Google’s search results are superior and far ahead of Bing and at least they list one coffee shop in a neighbouring suburb on the main search result page. However, in real world terms, the average searcher would likely abandon both Bing and Google mobile search results and end up walking or driving around until they find what they’re looking for.

The other half of the story are local businesses who really need to get on board and obtain local listings on the search engines…of course, that is if they want to attract new customers.

Tags: bing, bing mobile search, Google, google mobile search, iphone, local search, Mobile