Looking for something online? Just Bing It!
For about a month now Microsoft’s new foray into search has been popping up all over. The service, Bing, is dubbed a decision engine, in that it will help users find the most relevant content closer to the top of the returned results. In this article, I plan to do some binging and put this new engine to the test and offer a few first impressions after using the service for a few weeks.
Note: I have not been exclusive to Bing since its release as I find myself visiting Google out of habit.
Search throughout the Microsoft.com properties has been replaced by Bing. The old live search is gone and Bing is the wave of the future, and with good reason. The idea is that the queries entered by users need to bring back quality information before worrying about the quantity of links returned.
This gets done reasonably well; when I search for Ice Cream Sandwiches in Google I get a result of 17,700,000. The same search at bing.com returns 10,700,000 records, many of which are the same.
Figure A below shows the result count at Google and Bing.
Figure A
17 million and 10 million results for ice cream sandwiches
The results, while still massive are more focused when relevant queries are entered, the ice cream sandwiches search was to show the sheer number of results returned. For example, suppose I am going to visit Oshkosh Wisconsin for the EAA this summer.
When I enter Oshkosh WI into Yahoo I get a link to the city website and a few other links at the top of the results. I also get a pane of sponsored links that organizations pay to have show up first. While these might be quite helpful, I would rather see things relevant to visiting the city like the weather and things in the area than just the businesses who pay the most money,
Entering the same Oshkosh WI into Bing produces a different experience. Sure I still see search results and the city of Oshkosh website and a few sponsored links on the right (albeit far fewer links), but there are also related links in the left hand pane as well as links to list restaurants, businesses, the newspaper, maps, and other things that might make my trip to Oshkosh more pleasant. Figure B shows the Yahoo and Bing results for Oshkosh WI.
Figure B
The Yahoo and Bing search results for Oshkosh WI
Big deal so the search works, what makes Bing better or at least different from other sites
From using Bing I have come to notice the little things that just appear on their own. For example, recently I was traveling to a major city, when I connected to the Internet to look for someplace to have lunch and read the news; I noticed that the news page on Bing had the local news pulled off to the top right. The significance of that, for me, was that I did not need to tell the site any information about where I was located. Using my IP address (or the public IP address of where I happened to be connecting) it added local news. Finding a restaurant was also quite nice as Bing returned several results based on where I was located.
Using my Oshkosh WI search from above, I clicked the link for restaurants, and a list of local places with their phone numbers is displayed at the top of the screen. Figure C shows the restaurant results for Oshkosh WI.
Figure C
Places to eat in and around Oshkosh Wi
What else is there… search and?
Bing also allows a user to preview video from any sites if the video is returned as a result. The easiest way to show this would be on the news site. When a video appears in the list of results, clicking the window for the video will play the video right from the search results.
Bing also has a travel section which can help travelers find affordable fares when flying around the world. Using technology from farecast.com and MSN travel, Microsoft has created Bing Travel. This site will help users find the best prices for moving around the world that are available on the web. Figure D shows the opening screen for Bing Travel.
Figure D
Traveling with Bing
Even though the name of the site sounds like a startup created by characters in a 90’s sitcom, the search decision engine created by Microsoft really does get quality results. I encourage all of you to put Bing! Through its paces today.
The bottom line is that Bing actually works well. People can claim that Google has the most relevant results and for some people that might be true. Not everyone is a die-hard search fanatic though and for those people who use search for very basic and obtainable queries, the difference is very minimal between the two.
It’s already being said that Bing has gotten a step ahead of everyone else when it comes to travel and health searches. Plus, they have began to partner up with Twitter and Facebook for what should be an interesting real-time search trial period.
It’s good news that Google (and now Yahoo with Search Pad) are at least trying to make it interesting. I think a lot of people are growing tired of Google’s hold on the market. But people never really had a reason to care much about the other contenders. This healthy competition makes life better for everyone who uses search and I think that will show in the near future.
I also want to bring up http://www.eZanga.com, another search engine that’s growing and adding new things to its services all the time. It’s a meta search, but it doesn’t shell out multiple or unrelated results and makes for a good experience.