Natural Language Movie Queries - Bing vs Google

Case Study: Natural Language Movie Queries in Google and Bing @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 1

It started with this image Justin Briggsshared via RedditIn it, someone demonstrates how a naturallanguage search performs much better inGoogle vs Bing and Yahoo, at identifying themovie “Source Code”. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 2

@dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 3

So I quickly found an example whereBing performs better, with one of my favorite movies, Sideways. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 4

But being a bit obsessive, I wanted to dig deeper…. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 6

I had a hunch that the IMDB may be somehow helping Google with itsresults, so lets look at the IMDB page for “Source Code” @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 7

Look at what a cut and paste of a portion of the “Source Code” description returns…. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 9

Google returns the main movie page(the “/title”) directory but Bing does not…. Why?? @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 11

Let’s try helping Bing out a little bit… @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 12

Is that the wrong URL in Bing? @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 14

What is IMDB asking the engines to index? @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 15

This URL@dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 16

How about just searching the movie ID number in Bing?! @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 17

Ugh.@dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 19

Despite popular belief, I can’t give up now. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 20

I’ll try one more sample of quoted text @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 21

Nope.Finally I get the right URL to show by adding ‘tt’ @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 23

Nice!FYI, quoted text works in Yahoo. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 25

This works in Yahoo too. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 27

Even the movie ID # gets the right result. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 29

I can get the wrong URL to show by doing this…Yahoo is doing better than Bing, but only slightly… @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 31

Not to beat a dead horse… but onemore thing before I move on (there’s more!)… @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 33

Google even adds the forward slash!!!! What’s going on BING?! @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 34

I’m left with questions: Is Bing ignoring the canonical?Where does this URL come from? @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 35

Enter archive.org @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 36

IMDB started 302 redirecting in October 2003 @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 38

Let’s go back to Bing and look…. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 40

DOH!! And…. How do they do with a (pretty damn obvious) naturallanguage search for the Grinch Stole Christmas?? @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 42

Miserable. Epic. Fail. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 44

Let’s ask Google who stole Christmas… @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 45

It’s a Christmas celebration in this house. Let’s look at one moreexample, Sherlock Holmes… @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 47

The main movie page (“/title”) doesnot rank in Bing for Sherlock Holmes either… @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 49

That sucked….Why does “Sideways” do so well? @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 50

I can’t find the wrong URL in Bing’s index for Sideways.Perhaps this is why it outperformed Google… @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 53

The main movie pages in IMDB carry some serious ranking weight… If Bing is double indexing and can’teven return the right one which has all the links juice and authority, is this why Google outperforms??? @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 54

Not the pages Bing returns though…. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 56

I’ll try cutting some text from theSherlock Holmes movie description and searching in Bing… @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 58

That’s practically an exact match ofthe movie title, yet other pages are ranking about the IMDB page!! @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 60

One more thing in Google…My friend the ‘related:’ search operator… @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 61

Yup. Google returns strong related writer and movie sites. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 63

15 “Source Code” movie specific pages in fact. (Does Bing even have a ‘related:’ search function?) @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 65

Conclusion: Two Quick Takeaways @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 66

1. Check your indexation in Bing.Even though you’ve added an canonical and redirected an old URL to a new,this doesn’t mean either engine is going to get it right. Bing is seriouslymessing up the right result here. Check for duplicate content issues andadjust accordingly. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 67

2. Pay Attention to “Entities”The whole things that sparked this post, was Justin’s tweet andpost about “entities”. This study shows (to me) obvious movementtowards an entity based algarhythm.I suggest reading Justin’s post to get a better understanding ofentities. @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 68

Thanks… hope this was fun and informative Dan Shure@dan_shurewww.evolvingseo.com @dan_shure / www.evolvingseo.com 69

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Natural Language Movie Queries - Bing vs Google

by Dan Shure on Jan 11, 2012

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