1. Case Study: Natural Language Movie
Queries in Google and Bing
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2. It started with this image Justin Briggs
shared via Reddit
In it, someone demonstrates how a natural
language search performs much better in
Google vs Bing and Yahoo, at identifying the
movie “Source Code”.
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4. So I quickly found an example where
Bing performs better, with one of my
favorite movies, Sideways.
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6. But being a bit obsessive, I wanted to
dig deeper….
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7. I had a hunch that the IMDB may be
somehow helping Google with its
results, so lets look at the IMDB page
for “Source Code”
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9. Look at what a cut and paste of a
portion of the “Source Code”
description returns….
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11. Google returns the main movie page
(the “/title”) directory but Bing does
not…. Why??
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12. Let’s try helping Bing out a little bit…
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14. Is that the wrong URL in Bing?
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15. What is IMDB asking the engines to
index?
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16. This URL
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17. How about just searching the movie
ID number in Bing?!
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19. Ugh.
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20. Despite popular belief, I can’t give up now.
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21. I’ll try one more sample of quoted text
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23. Nope.
Finally I get the right URL to show by
adding ‘tt’
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25. Nice!
FYI, quoted text works in Yahoo.
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27. This works in Yahoo too.
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29. Even the movie ID # gets the
right result.
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31. I can get the wrong URL to show by
doing this…
Yahoo is doing better than Bing, but
only slightly…
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33. Not to beat a dead horse… but one
more thing before I move on (there’s
more!)…
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34. Google even adds the forward slash!!!!
What’s going on BING?!
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35. I’m left with questions:
Is Bing ignoring the canonical?
Where does this URL come from?
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36. Enter archive.org
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38. IMDB started 302 redirecting in
October 2003
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40. Let’s go back to Bing and look….
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42. DOH!!
And…. How do they do with a
(pretty damn obvious) natural
language search for the Grinch Stole
Christmas??
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44. Miserable. Epic. Fail.
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45. Let’s ask Google who stole Christmas…
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47. It’s a Christmas celebration
in this house.
Let’s look at one more
example, Sherlock Holmes…
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49. The main movie page (“/title”) does
not rank in Bing for Sherlock Holmes
either…
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50. That sucked….
Why does “Sideways” do so well?
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53. I can’t find the wrong URL in Bing’s
index for Sideways.
Perhaps this is why it outperformed
Google…
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54. The main movie pages in IMDB carry
some serious ranking weight…
If Bing is double indexing and can’t
even return the right one which has all
the links juice and authority, is this
why Google outperforms???
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56. Not the pages Bing returns though….
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58. I’ll try cutting some text from the
Sherlock Holmes movie description
and searching in Bing…
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60. That’s practically an exact match of
the movie title, yet other pages are
ranking about the IMDB page!!
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61. One more thing in Google…
My friend the ‘related:’ search
operator…
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63. Yup. Google returns strong related
writer and movie sites.
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65. 15 “Source Code” movie specific pages
in fact.
(Does Bing even have a ‘related:’ search
function?)
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66. Conclusion: Two Quick Takeaways
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67. 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 seriously
messing up the right result here. Check for duplicate content issues and
adjust accordingly.
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68. 2. Pay Attention to “Entities”
The whole things that sparked this post, was Justin’s tweet and
post about “entities”. This study shows (to me) obvious movement
towards an entity based algarhythm.
I suggest reading Justin’s post to get a better understanding of
entities.
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69. Thanks… hope this was fun and
informative 
Dan Shure
@dan_shure
www.evolvingseo.com
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