Finding information online with Microsoft Bing
Welcome to June. Today Microsoft launched Bing, it’s new approach to search and so far, I think it is pretty slick.
Suggested links based on your query are placed along the side of the page, offering a list of additional items.
For example, searching for Green Bay produced a list of popular Green Bay related sites as expected, but the list on the left provided other things I might like to know about Green Bay such as restaurants, weather, airport information and other things.
Figure A below shows some of the results returned for Green Bay.
Figure 1
The site also includes related search terms in the left column to help find other resources based on what is entered.
I have also noticed that Bing is location aware. For example, when I searched for Star Trek, the movie listings for the area I am currently in appeared. Helpful when travelling and looking for things near by for sure. Figure B shows my current results for Star Trek.
Figure B
Surely I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface on the features brought out in Bing, but I will give it a shot and see if Microsoft can catch the competition.
So what does this have to do with IT Management?
The answer to that question depends on how you look at it. Taylored results and additional suggestions, beyond sponsored links, can be very helpful. It seems to me that the search engine is smarter in calculating results and delivers more useful content.
Imagine attending a conference for your company and being able to rely on your search engine to check flight status, get a cab, find reasonable dinner choices, and get the baseball scores for the game of the local baseball team. Saving time in looking for local results based on your IP address.
Giving your users and staff a predictive search tool could be a huge benefit if the technology Microsoft is using is well maintained and stays afloat. Predictive search results might be a boost to the productivity of employees because they will spend less time searching for results and more time actually using found information.
I am excited to give Bing! its due. Check it out at http://www.bing.com and leave your thoughts or usage suggestions in the comments.
Will it beat google? No. Is it even usable? No.
There is no reason to move away from google.
I like the predictive search and location awareness myself. Sure Google is king of the search market right now, but there are other engines out there. If the results are better and I need not visit 4 pages of links to get what I need, that is a move in the right direction.