Yahoo vs Bing – Which Search Engine is Better?
World is just one click away. To prove this fact, various search engines are operating that have turned the world into a global village. For this article, I will compare the two biggest search engines, Yahoo and Bing. Both have various useful features with simple interfaces. Yahoo has indexed more websites compared to Bing. But Bing shows content-based search results and Yahoo shows results based on matching words.
Bing and Yahoo have some security issues, but Bing is far more secure to use as compared to Yahoo. Despite the comparison, both are great facilitators for their users.
Let’s have a deep understanding of both search engines one by one.
Table of Contents
Yahoo Search Engine - Overview
Yahoo is the oldest search engine. It stands for “Yet another hierarchical officious oracle“. It was first established by David filo & Jerry Yang in 1994. It was known as Jerry and David’s guide to the World Wide Web. Because of its growing popularity, its owner turned its name into Yahoo! It owns various companies such as Yahoo mail, Yahoo games, My yahoo, Yahoo Finance etc. Yahoo has been a strong competitor for other search engines.
Despite a lot of turmoil and difficulties, it can always sustain itself. According to Wikipedia, more than two hundred million people use it regularly. Yahoo! Provides various services to its users such as Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! dictionary, Yahoo! map etc. Since 2009, Bing and Yahoo have been working together and sharing ads and search results.
Yahoo! Unique Features
Every search engine has its speciality, which makes it different from others. Yahoo is not a web browser. By being a search engine, it provides various unique features to its users.
1- Website Indexing
Yahoo started indexing web pages in 3003 and now 20,000,000,000 pages have been indexed on Yahoo. Users can find their desired information easily. Yahoo supports larger and well-established websites as compared to small and local businesses.
2- Easy to use interface
Yahoo’s home page is simple and easy to use. Various features on its homepage connect the users with sports, news, maps, travel, shopping, and email instantly. One can narrow down a particular feature just by clicking on it.
3- Specific searches
Like other search engines, it will not show unnecessary content. Yahoo shows word-specific search, not content-specific. It means if you search the word “Henry”, it shows all the results having a matching word Henry in it.
4- Compose emails
Yahoo provides a unique feature of composing emails instantly. For example, if you write [email protected] and press enter, it automatically converts into an email. You can use it for sending documents and photos immediately.
5- Reads search history
Yahoo reads your search history regularly and based on it, shows results on the yahoo homepage. It helps you to visit only those sites, which you wanted to see.
Bing Search Engine - Overview
Bing is launched by the CEO of the American Company Microsoft, Steve Ballmer on 3 June 2009. Bing is often known as ‘Because it is not Google’. Initially, Microsoft was using Live Search and MSN in place of Bing. By launching Bing, they wanted to change the dynamics of Search Engines.
Now Bing and Yahoo are working together and providing a good challenge to Google. Microsoft is ranked among the top 5 successful brands but Bing was unsuccessful to get any position even in the top 100 brands. Approximately 126 million people are regularly using bing.
Unique features of Bing
Like Yahoo, Bing is also providing various unique features to its users.
1- Attractive Interface
Bing has a very professional and attractive user face that shows a variety of features on it. Just on one home page, it shows news, sport news, weather, currency rate and a beautiful background. You can also customize the Bing homepage.
2- Video Search
Bing does not own any platform like youtube, still, it shows videos by grid thumbnails and we can watch them without leaving the SERPs.
3- Awards
Microsoft give awards to people when they search for something on Bing. Award is in the form of some points. When they added up gradually, you can enjoy it in the long run.
4- Image search
We can narrow down image searches. Bing provides a feature where we can cut down an image and search for its details. For example, in a pic of nature, if you cut any bird in that pic, bing will help you in doing an advance search for that bird.
This feature of Bing helps the optimization of your website. For Example, the use of suitable keywords for photos on websites will enhance the SEO of this website
5- Search History
Microsoft provides these great features. You can use Bing from any device. You can also see your search history from any other device. Bing automatically completes words and phrases and provides options for language and country in which you can search your search history.
6- Weather, Currency and Unit Conversion
Bing shows the current weather forecast on its first page. You can also search for weather in any area of the world.
Similarly, you can see current currency rates and can convert them into another. Besides currencies, you can convert different units into each other.
Yahoo vs Bing: Which is Better Search Engine
Bing interface is more attractive than yahoo and shows many features as compared to yahoo. Yahoo email is more secure than Bing but Bing as a search engine is more secure than Yahoo.
Yahoo vs Bing - Which search engine is more secure?
- To avoid security breaches, both search engines have greatly modified them throughout the year. Bing contained thousands of malware search results. Approximately, 2/3rd of search results contained malicious links. Bing is highly prone to search results poisoning as compared to other search engines. Despite this, Bing takes care of its user’s privacy more than other search engines. Bing does not track the users all private information and keeps it safer for its customers.
- Bing does not show ads to users based on their personal information. The connection between Bing and its customers is end-to-end encrypted. It gives Bing a higher security edge over others. With Bing security measures, Microsoft additionally provides further security to Bing’s public results. Microsoft uses various measures that decide how Bing’s public results should be handled. It also gives much strength and security to data privacy.
In 2013, almost 3 billion yahoo accounts were breached. It caused a great loss of yahoo’s credibility. Yahoo is also highly prone to attacks by hackers. Till today, yahoo tried its best to strengthen its security, but still it needs a lot to do. Yahoo tools various security measures to regain its credibility such as Account Key. It’s a type of two-factor authentication. With a password and username, hackers will also need to log in to your mobile. As compared to Yahoo, Yahoo email is far more secure than Bing.
Yahoo vs Bing - Pros
Yahoo’s Pros
- Link quality is high because of human indexing
- It is a good place to start.
- PC Magazin has rated it as ‘The Best Web Directory’.
- It has detailed shopping options.
- It gives priority to organic results.
- It gives access to various types of information instantly.
- It provides excessive information on various topics.
- It is a strong and well-established search engine.
- It has strong research ability.
- Information available for all types and all levels of students.
Bing’s Pros
- It has excellent image and video searchability.
- It provides strong integration for social media.
- Has various promising and useful features.
- Shows different high-quality images in the background
- Provides current weather forecast without searching.
- Provides the latest currency rates
- We can easily convert currency units with each other.
- Has a strong security system.
- Attractive interface
- Shows the latest news
Yahoo vs Bing - Cons
Yahoo’s Cons
- Small Database
- Offers a few tools for refining searches
- It has atemporal behaviour
- Various searches are not dated
- It has a puzzling ads policy.
- Its spam filter is not working well.
- For desktop programs, such as emails, it gives no IMAP access.
Bing’s Cons
- It has a slow speed as compared to various other search engines
- People face difficulty while ranking on Bing
- It is difficult to earn with Bing.
- Forums are not getting much attention through Bing.
- Less number of people using it regularly.
- Used less than other search engines.
Yahoo vs Bing- Final Verdict
After analysing Yahoo and Bing to their depth, now it is time to solve the confusion. Both search engines have various useful features with some security issues.
Bing provides useful features related to image and video search as compared to yahoo. Both are owned by the same company Microsoft.
Bing does not sell your information to companies for ads and nor track your activities on the internet. That’s why I will prefer to use Bing.
