Why Gay Men Use Google, Not Bing

[rawTOP]

I've always noticed that Google was the biggest driver of traffic to my sites. I just never could get the traffic other people talked about when it came to Bing/Yahoo! (which are the same – Big powers Yahoo! Search). My take on it was that gay guys just preferred Google to Bing. So the question was always "why do gay men prefer Google?" Besides the fact that Google generally has better results than Bing, Google is a huge defender of gay rights. These two stories today struck me in how different they are:

Google’s “Olympic Charter” Logo Stands Up To Russia’s Anti-Gay Legislation

Bing to Showcase Winter Olympics Data in Search Results

So while Bing is all "Hip Hip Hooray" about the Olympics, Google is using the opportunity to protest Russia's treatment of gays. They're doing is in a very public way – even on Google Russia and in places like Saudi Arabia – so not just to a western audiences who generally support gay rights.

When Ellen came out YEARS ago now, most of her advertisers dropped her. Volkswagen bought the ad right after she came out on her show, and they ran this ad (which given the context is an interracial gay couple in San Francisco)…

I had had a VW as my first car, then switched to Honda, but every car I've bought since that commercial has been a VW. In fact VW dropped the dealership here in Manhattan where a sales person had called me a "fucking faggot". Dropping a dealer is a big deal (especially in a market like NY), and I'm sure there was more to it than my one complaint, but I'd like to think that my complaint didn't help their case when they tried to renew their contract with VW.

There are moments which define companies for me. VW had theirs when Ellen came out and now I buy nothing but VWs. Travelocity was the first travel company to feature gay couples in general audience advertising (back when it was a big deal to do something like that), so I still use them when I book a flight. And today Google had their moment. I really could care less that Rachael Zoe pushes Bing. Google is the company that is willing to lose customers to defend us. That means something.

Edited February 7, 2014 by rawTOP

[rawTOP]

AT&T (sponsor of the US Olympic Team) has also publicly criticized Russia for their stance on gay rights… Thumbs up for that, but it wasn't bold enough to be a defining moment IMHO.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/07/us-olympics-gay-idUSBREA160AX20140207

NBC (the TV sponsor for the US) was giving a fair amount of air time to coverage of gay issues - doing interviews with people like Billie Jean King where they talked about what's going on in Russia at the moment. Hopefully they'll keep that up during their Olympic coverage.

I'd like to see Coke do something big and bold – their Superbowl commercial was nice, but they need to do more.

[MackyJay]

People use Google cause it is the 'thing' right now, but I don't use it cause I can find thing easier and faster off of Bing/Yahoo every single time and have proven it to several people now that thought Google was just 'it'. Google is vastly overrated as far as I am concerned and wish it would just go away, period, as a nonsense and useless money grabber.

[wood]

Lets not forget this little ambiguous gem from VW.

I also had that generation of Jetta VR6, and LOVED it.

[rawTOP]

FYI - here are my stats for the past month… Google is driving 13.5 times more traffic to my sites than Big and Yahoo! combined (click to see bigger version of the image).

There was a time a few months ago when Google was having issues and I tried out Bing and found it to be decent on some queries and not on others. In fact it reminded me a bit of the old Google. I mentioned to a friend of ours who's pretty senior at Google that I was liking Bing and (despite him being drunk at the time) he was deeply worried that someone like me would prefer Bing. He said there were some internal battles at Google over what type of content was getting ranked. About two weeks later the Google SERPs improved drastically and things went back to normal and once again Google was better.

If you're really wondering if Bing is better, try BingItOn.com. Though it's blocked in some countries where their SERPs are pure crap. Most of the people I know say Google wins with 60+% of searches being better on Google.

But my point is that even if they were roughly the same, you use the one that's willing to lose customers to defend your human rights. Bing now has a really high bar to jump to get me to use them.

[NYCBearpig]

FYI - here are my stats for the past month… Google is driving 13.5 times more traffic to my sites than Big and Yahoo! combined (click to see bigger version of the image).

[ATTACH=CONFIG]55393[/ATTACH]

There was a time a few months ago when Google was having issues and I tried out Bing and found it to be decent on some queries and not on others. In fact it reminded me a bit of the old Google. I mentioned to a friend of ours who's pretty senior at Google that I was liking Bing and (despite him being drunk at the time) he was deeply worried that someone like me would prefer Bing. He said there were some internal battles at Google over what type of content was getting ranked. About two weeks later the Google SERPs improved drastically and things went back to normal and once again Google was better.

If you're really wondering if Bing is better, try BingItOn.com. Though it's blocked in some countries where their SERPs are pure crap. Most of the people I know say Google wins with 60+% of searches being better on Google.

But my point is that even if they were roughly the same, you use the one that's willing to lose customers to defend your human rights. Bing now has a really high bar to jump to get me to use them.

When I'm searching for more extreme porn I get better hits with Bing.

[rickjamel]

People use Google cause it is the 'thing' right now, but I don't use it cause I can find thing easier and faster off of Bing/Yahoo every single time and have proven it to several people now that thought Google was just 'it'. Google is vastly overrated as far as I am concerned and wish it would just go away, period, as a nonsense and useless money grabber.

I hate Bing. When I've tried them I thought "wtf?" when the results came up.

[Bttm2go]

I generally use Bing. It was the default at work and on Apple. Just got used to it. Sometimes I do seek out Google but not often.

[Guest JizzDumpWI]

I wonder if it sorts across Android vs iPhone? Android has a larger market share. Might be interesting to factor that split against Google/Bing?

[ChaserBoysRHot]

I agree with all of your comments about Google being more pro-gay than Microsoft and that being a good reason to use them (I don't really like Micro$oft's practices anyway). However, I have another reason why there might be the 13.5* difference.

For better or for worse (I would say worse, but that's just my opinion) I think it's safe to say that the average age of the users on this board is late 20s or higher (probably higher). Bing has only been out 4 years. Humans are largely creatures of habit and it takes quite a bit for us to modify our habits. Most of the users on this board started doing Internet searches when Google was pretty much it (or at least greatly dominant in that field). We're used to Google and use it because we've always used it, and don't see any reason to move away from it.

There are other factors out there I'm sure, but I'd say that's probably part of it.

[NLbear]

I always use Google. I am using IE 8.1 (along with Chrome sometimes when IE doesn't work) and MS Office for Excel and Word but nothing much else from MS. But as a search engine Google works best for me. Never used Bing. Not sure if this is related to "gay men". I think most persons, straight or gay, use Google. It is simply the most accepted and used search engine.

[Belfast-Bottom]

I have been using google for years. When I've tried BING in the U.K. it always seems to put a TON of commercial sites at the top of the list. It's too much effort to scroll down to what I'm looking for. The fact that google has a pro gay equality stance is another good reason to stick with them!

[program5]

duckduckgo is the best search engine, its anonymous works fast and even provides ssl encryption and they dont put commercial links at the top, you may not get the best search engine out there, but i figure this community should know about it.

[versbos]

I use Bing

[BC_Bottom]

I use google because it is best.

Example:

New laptop, I wanted to install Microsoft Security essentials. I had not yet installed a good browser, so I started IE and did a search for security essentials in Bing. The first page of results were not what I was looking for.

I jumped over to google, and it was the second or third link.

This is a piece of MS software, and their search could not take me to it. This may have changed since I last tried it.

For the record MS Security essentials is one of the lowest impact antivirus programs out there.