Posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 by Shachar Pessis
Bing – Last Monday Microsoft launched its new search engine called Bing. The Microsoft slogan for this new service is: “The world doesn’t need just another search engine, it needs a decision engine.“ Besides its Grade A copy-writing catch phrase, Bing seems to challenge its nemesis,Google. Whether a search or a decision engine, is Bing really as good and innovative as Microsoft would like us to believe? Does it provide better search results than Google or Yahoo do? To answer this question read on or simply decide for yourself by taking the BlindSearch test.
I conducted several search tests and my conclusion is this: it all depends on what you are searching for. For example, when searching for “AllMyFaves,” Bing’s first page results only include URLs that offer direct access to the different pages of AllMyFaves, even though Bing comes across as an excellent search engine at first glance. One downside to this particular test is Bing’s lack in the provided info’s diversity (which Google has covered beautifully). When it was time for the Google results of the same key search words, not only did the AMF homepage pop right up, but the AllMyFaves twitter account and facebook fanpage were also displayed. Furthermore, Google’s results in terms of diversity represent the quintessence of well-configured, easy to consume search results.
Despite what I’ve described above, I must emphasize and give the well-deserved credit for Bing’s two strong points. The first is their fairly extensive image search service; an almost infinite number of relevant results came through -on one page- for my Jude Law search on Bing. All this while Google offers only a fraction of that of the former, and to see more results the Google user must browse through subsequent pages.
The second Bing forte is its Video search. When searching for Franz Ferdinand – Walk Away, Bing results are more visually organized and appealing to the eye (than those of Google or YouTube). And the best part – the video search offers a quick glance pop-up so you can get a feel of your preferences as you browse. Simply point your mouse icon on a certain video and let the visuals do their thing. This really speeds up your selection process and consequently, shortens your overall search time.
I know I haven’t covered all search aspects of Bing but I promise I’ll keep a close eye on these guys to see their progress. In the meantime all I can say is that Bing is most definitely interesting and worth checking out. I suggest you start with the video below to get a glimpse of what Bing is all about.
