What I’ve been trying to understand is how in spite of all that companies like Google and Microsoft still manage to have a huge online presence.

No.Of.TwitterAccounts= (Size.Of.Company)^(1/2)  ?

For example today, Google announced a list of all of its Twitter accounts in one page. 

How do they do it ?

General
twitter.com/Google – our central account
twitter.com/Blogger – for Blogger fans
twitter.com/GoogleCalendar – user tips & updates
twitter.com/GoogleImages – news, tips, tricks on our visual image search
twitter.com/GoogleNews – latest headlines via Google News
twitter.com/GoogleReader – from our feed reader team
twitter.com/iGoogle – news & notes from Google’s personalized homepage
twitter.com/GoogleStudents – news of interest to students using Google
twitter.com/YouTube – for YouTube fans
twitter.com/YouTubeES – en Espanol
twitter.com/GoogleAtWork – solutions for IT and workplace productivity

Geo-related
twitter.com/SketchUp – Google SketchUp news
twitter.com/3DWH – SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse
twitter.com/Modelyourtown – 3D modeling to build your favorite places
twitter.com/EarthOutreach – Earth & Maps tools for nonprofits & orgs
twitter.com/GoogleMaps – uses, tips, mashups
twitter.com/GoogleSkyMap -Android app for the night sky

Ads-related
twitter.com/AdSense – for online publishers
twitter.com/AdWordsHelper – looking out for AdWords questions and tech issues
twitter.com/AdWordsProSarah – Google Guide for AdWords Help Forum
twitter.com/GoogleAnalytics – insights for website effectiveness
twitter.com/GoogleAdBuilder – re building display ads
twitter.com/GoogleRetail – for retail advertisers
twitter.com/TechnologyUK – for U.K. tech advertisers
twitter.com/InsideAdWordsDE – for German AdWords customers
twitter.com/GoogleAgencyDE – for German ad agencies
twitter.com/AdSensePT – info for Portuguese-language publishers
twitter.com/AdWordsRussia – AdWords news & tips in Russian
twitter.com/DentroDeAdWords – Spanish updates from the Inside

AdWords blog
twitter.com/AdWordsAPI – AdWords API tips

Developer & technical
twitter.com/GoogleResearch – from our research scientists
twitter.com/GoogleWMC – Google Webmaster Central
twitter.com/GoogleCode – latest updates for Google developer products
twitter.com/GoogleData – Data APIs provide a standard protocol for reading and writing web data
twitter.com/app_engine – web apps run on Google infrastructure
twitter.com/DataLiberation – our initiative for complete import/export of all data
twitter.com/GoogleMapsAPI – about using Google Maps embedded in websites
twitter.com/GoogleIO – Google’s largest annual developer event

Culture, People
twitter.com/googletalks – notes from our @Google speaker series
twitter.com/googlejobs – the voice of Google recruiters

Country or Region
twitter.com/googledownunder – Google activities in Australia & New Zealand
twitter.com/GoogleDE – Google in Germany
twitter.com/GoogleLatAm – Latin America (en Espanol)
twitter.com/GooglePolicyIt – Notes on Google policy issues in Italy

The results were collected from 518 unique source IP addresses (some were just NATs from larger organizations). 251 users just executed 1 query each. 111 users executed 2 queries and rest executed more than that.

A total of 808 results were submitted just for “standard web search” category and of that 44% of the submissions were in favor of Google. 32% of them were for Yahoo. Only about 28% results went for Microsoft’s new search engine “Bing”.

Between Google and Yahoo, a user is 15% more likely to pick Google than Yahoo. Between Google and Bing, a user will pick Google 21% more frequently than Bing.

The results may not be staggering for folks who have been following search engine trends over the last few weeks, but for me, to see the results from this random test is surprising considering the amount of money Microsoft plans to pump into Bing’s advertisement. I wish I had done this test before Bing was launched to find out how different MSN is from Bing…

So why is Google better ?

Since search results were pulled using published search APIs from the search providers and because these search APIs may not always show the same results which users see on the real search page, it could be argued that these results may be inaccurate.

Another problem I noticed is that different search engines behave differently when there are spelling errors in search. For example look at the results for “steven hakwing” ( was looking for Stephen Hawking) on the 3 search engines

Bing  – Bing tells you that you could have spelt is wrong, and shows results for “steven hawking” instead.

Yahoo – Yahoo warns me that I should probably correct my spelling to “Stephen Hawking” but shows the search results for “steven hakwing”

Google – Google suggests that I could be looking for “Steven Hawking”, but actually shows me results for “Stephen Hawking” which is what I really wanted.

Since I didn’t use spell-sugession APIs to correct the search terms before it was submitted, it could be argued that my tests are biased towards google which does auto-correction. But as an end-user, I could argue that that I want to see what I intended to type and not what I actually typed. I think the ability to predict what users are thinking is is one of the core reasons why Google has a lead over other search engines.

And as for Bing’s cash-back plan, a friend of mine said that he’d be happy to use Bing to buy something.. as soon as he figures out what he really wants on Google or Yahoo.

I welcome your comments or feedback, especially if you have ideas on how I could improve the tests.