So, I had a meeting with a business partner the other day and he came in talking about how great Bing is – Bing is Microsoft’s new search engine (they call it a decision engine).  He was raving about how you can type in a type of food and your zip code and see local results!  I thought to myself, “Doesn’t Google already do that?”

So, as he sat in my office, I opened up Firefox and went to www.bing.com and a new tab to www.google.com and a tab to www.yahoo.com - I figured, let’s give it a whirl!

In my search string, I typed in “pizza 80241″ where 80241 is a zip code nearby in beautiful Colorado where our Colorado Web Development company is located.

Here are my rather interesting findings – I was actually quite surprised in many ways:

Note: I only looked at anything that showed up above the fol.d  Just to be as fair as possible.

1. Google

Google actually had a good degree of variation based on smaller chains to larger chains and geographically dispersed.

All from Local Business Results – Google Local:
Capri Pizza, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, Papa Murphys, Dominos, Pizza Hut, Anthonys, Abos, and Capri.

Then on the organic results from the SERP:
2 links to pizza pages on yellowpages and 2 links to pizza on merchant circle.

Either way, I’m sure I could find something useful and tasty just in the local results up top with the map.

Note: Now what was odd is that the points on the map were quite varried, there were some really close (5 – 10 mins) and some far (20 – 30 minutes away) – but a good distribution none the less.

2. Yahoo!

This one I didn’t get…there were 3 results up top next to the local results with a map.  3…just 3.  And #3 was over 30 minutes away from this zip code.

Here are the Yahoo! Local results:
Anthony’s II, Boardwalk Cafe, and Carl’s Pizza.

Note: No Dominoes, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, or any of the big ones that I know are around that zip.

Organic results from the SERP:
Result #1 was to Yahoo Local, #2 to yellowpages, #3 to citysearch, and #4 to DexKnows.

This is very interesting, while Google linked directly to the web sites of the retail pizza locations – it could be the corporate site vs. the local shop – Yahoo! instead chose to link to several directories.  Good food for thought if you see what I see

3. Microsoft Bing

This one really cracked me up…the local results up top were actually pretty good.

In the Local listings at the top we had:
Capri, Abos, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Pudge Bros, Anthonys.

Note: All good, all close, and a good mix of small chains and large chains. 8 listings in all showing.

But the key here is that all 8 were very close to the zip code entered!

So down below the local listings in the organic SERP…and I love this:

Capri Pizza, Autozone, Space Imaging, A Denver Directory, Yellow pages.

Did you catch #2 and #3??? Autozone and Space Imaging!

Okay, so that was the link title and the links went to yellowpages which did actually link to Autozone and Space imaging without any mention of pizza – oddly enough this decision engine gave some weight based on an ad that probably showed up on those pages…even though the pages were for Autozone, etc. If I were looking for something more important, like a Hospital and I got something like Autozone or a bakery pop up – I’d be pissed.

So, who won Round 1 of the Search Engine Faceoff?

Local listings at the top: I have to give it to Bing, the results were the most accurate and well rounded.

Organic results inline SERP: This one goes to Google, they linked to the actual web sites of the pizza places and showed me coupons, etc.

(Google: 1 Yahoo!: 0 Bing: 1)