Searching #75: Google and Beyond

I was pretty surprised to find out my preferred search results did NOT come from Google. Like many others, I've been using Google for many services including my primary email address, documents, and searching. After using Blind Search, I see that Bing showed me favorable results twice and Yahoo once. I will definitely test out Bing more from now on. My 3 searches were my name, Sew Crafty, and Arcade Fire. In my opinion, my search phrases were simple; I'm not too sure what kind of complex term I could have searched. Bing showed more links that listed my name (my name is very common apparently) of individuals in Houston. For Sew Crafty, I went with Bing as well as it listed the Houston business first as well as other businesses in the US and craft-related sites. Arcade Fire is band I really like and Yahoo showed results of their website, their Myspace, and their Fan forum page. I believe Google and Bing had Wikipedia entries listed in the top results..no bueno.
But according to Hitwise, I'm not the only one siding with Google. According to this week's statistics, Google is the #1 site across multiple measures: top websites, top search engine in visits and volume. However, there is a marginal difference between the top sites which Facebook is a close 2nd. As for search engines, Google is in the lead by more than 50%!
Although I'm fairly content with what Google offers me, I am very impressed with Bing. I do recall when it first came out but I never took time to look at their site. I am a visual learner and appreciate visual design. I like how Bing has changing backgrounds that offer relevant/educational information tagged on the images. I also like the travel feature that allowed me to search flight prices on the spot. That is very convenient. I also checked out the shopping feature as I am in the market for a new MP3 player. I don't think Google has given me results as precise as Bing has given me. I use Yahoo occasionally as well. In my eyes, Yahoo will always be the middle child, hehe.