Bing: A Decision Engine?
In Reviews - Posted on Tue 18th August 2009 5:09PM
So, I have been using the new Microsoft Bing search...I mean decision engine, and I've been comparing it to Google, which I use everyday. First, I will say I like Google, but it has some strange results sometimes. Second, I have never been all that impressed with anything related to Microsoft. I have used pretty much their whole catalog of products and they while work, I always end up wrestling with some error or another when using Microsoft software.
I'm not here to bash Microsoft though...I'm here to tell you what I think of Bing.
All in all, Bing is a very usable search engine, as to how well it makes decisions, meh, but we all can recognize advertizing hyperbole, I think. The results it returns are very similar to the results from Google. The feature I noticed immedietly was, when Bing's results are content type separated, they are more clearly and cleanly separated than Google's results. Google does separate by content type, but I think Bing's style makes it more obvious. For some strange reason Bing does not always return sorted result, which I think is a mistake.
Having the search history exposed by default is another good move by Bing, again Google does have a search history but it is not shown by default. Bings sidebar is in principle more user friendly, but the Bing sidebar sometimes seems to have little bearing on the searches that are being made, while Googles sidebar has much more relevant content(although, Google hides the related searches at the bottom of the page?). I think the related searches feature needs a lot more work before you can trust it to actually be related searches. I did a search on Kurt Cobain's House in both Google and Bing, Google found it immediatley and even brought up a map to it. Bing thought it would be in my home state of Indiana for some reason, and thus was not able to find it. Also, Bing did not think it was a location and so did not bring up a map until I explicitly clicked on the Maps link.
There are a couple of little features that I find interesting: the enhanced view for wikis, which pulls the wiki info into the Bing page, and the extra information about the web site that appears when you hover over the little orange circle to the right of search result entries. It does not appear until you hover over a specific result. It's a great idea, but I think it could be implemented better. Make it show all the time. I think Google could learn a little something here though. I know Google, at one time, had a site preview hover tool, but it was slow so it was nixed. Maybe now would be a good time to bring that back? I also like the Google wiki feature where you can promote, remove, and comment on returned results; as of this date Bing does not have this feature.
Both Bing and Google have common search parameter features such as definition searches and weather (even though Bing return China's weather in the related search area! I'm no where near China). No real difference at all. Both also highlight the search string in the returned results. A good move for both parties.
Now on to the advanced search. Google has more control features, Bing's feels stunted. I don't think there is any need to elaborate, just go look at the difference between the two. It is very easy to see which is truly an advanced search.
All in all, both engines are useable. I think Google is a little more mature in its usability, but it also has had a few more years to gain that maturity. I would like to see how Bing improves over the next few years. I think before long, we may all be Binging everything.
