Coming Soon: New Microsoft "Bing" Search Engine

In just a few days Microsoft will be rolling out its new search engine, which the company has named "Bing".

So what makes Bing special?

From PC Magazine's recent article Hands On with Microsoft's Bing Search:

Basically, Bing increases the chances that you'll get the answer you need right on the results page, without the need to click to another site, which may not even have what you're looking for. Foremost among new features that serve this goal is the "quick-page preview," which displays text from pages in the results when you hover the mouse over the right side of a result's entry. It's one of those "why wasn't that always there?" features that you quickly become dependent on.

Microsoft has identified several of the problems with Web search as it stands today. Much of the time users are not really looking for a Web page but for an answer. By providing results that answer users' questions immediately rather than requiring them to navigate to another page and back if the first one didn't yield the info they were looking for, Bing brings value and efficiency to Web searches. I didn't run into any cases where Google's results were more relevant than Bing's, whether I was looking for a specific site or for general information on a topic.

Also, here's an interesting Microsoft press release that explains that Bing's goal as a search engine is to help you make better decisions.

You can get a preview of Bing by checking it out here.

Yann

The way I interpret this (and I have been wrong before... I think it was a Tuesday)...

By providing the answer ON THE RESULTS PAGE, it captures all of the marketing potential of that web search. In other words, people will not traipse from web site to web site full of irrelevent drivel, all the while being exposed to the marketing included within those irrelevent sites. Naturally, this increases the value of advertisements on Bing, due to the fact that it is reducing the chance that users will proceed to other sites.

Synopsis, this is yet another round of increasing the advertising share. It is driven by money. Help you make better decisions??? Puh-leeeze!

With all of that being said, I conceed that it might very well result in a faster set of answers for the surfer. Time will tell.

More importantly, how long will it take before the common vernacular "I think I will Google it", is transformed into "I think I will Bing it". I mean, lets face it, you NEVER hear someone say "I think I will Yahoo it", and that search engine has been around forever.

Can you Bing it?

I forsee this as website operators that rely on advertising for good content (for example, Petri.il) might opt to exclude their websites from search results offered in Bing.  If no such option is easily presentable, then I'm sure there are ways to identify the Bing servers and block them.

It is interesting, though.  If Bing offers a revenue share with the content owner, it might be better.

I often find the answer I'm looking for in the two lines of preview text that google displays on the search page.

What I would like is an exclusion is the search results that direct you to another page of search results.  Like they've poisoned the index and created their content page based on your search request.

Dave

Dave, that's why I made a custom google search engine.  Its very easy, check it out.  You can include and exclude.  You can also decide to prioritize results based on your list of sites, or set your engine to exclusively search only those sites in its include list.

I'm not a big fan of Microsloth, so I suspect the real name for this new system is "sting".

It could go either way: 1) A way for people to see more information about a site they may want to visit, so they don't waste time visiting a site only to find it's not really what they are looking for. Or 2) A way to provide more information for the user so they are less likely to click away without leaving Bing via a paid ad.

Either way, the end result may be less traffic to listed web sites. Since many sites depend on visitors clicking on paid ads, this may not be good for site owners. Good for searchers? Maybe.

I think there are better ways to provide informtion to users on the suitability of the sites they may want to visit. And a big part of the problem is that most people don't know how to search beyond putting in one or more keywords. Studies show they ARE learning to put in more works to try and narrow down the results. But quotes are used as if they get billed for each one they use...!

I have to ask myself WHY none of the search engines have undertaken a program to educate the public how to use some basic search options. "Boolean Logic" should be as much a household term as the word "Google" in my opinion. As a nation, we are largely "search illiterate".

Christian, perhaps they don't educate the public on good search technique because they actually receive more traffic as a result of poor search technique.

Let's face it. None of this is about making things easier for the public. It is about providing a service that results in the greatest amount of return, even if that return is invisible to the searcher. If providing a better service to the public results in that higher return, then so be it, but the objective comes from the money side, not the public service side.

Oftentimes, when things don't make sense (like lousy matches to search criteria), it is because the driver is money rather than end user service.

I wonder if Microsoft came up with this concept on their own, or if they bought out another company to claim the idea as their own.  I might try it, but I am quite comfortable with googling. 

I do agree that there is a percentage of the population that needs to learn how to properly use search engines and be able to parse the results from their poor techniques.  Being a health care center, some of our users enter search terms that could bring some inappropriate results. 

@Chris - Somehow, the custom search engine has escaped my attention. I'll def check that out.

I setup Bing as my default search at work, earlier today. I'll try it out for a while to see what it's like

Yeah, I have to edit mine to be more user friendly.  Right now it includes some forum sites.  I think I'm going to exclude forums from a basic search and only include articles (Microsoft and others).  Forums really give strange results at times and often I find questions with no answers.  Then I'll make another custom search engine that will include forums and newsgroups.

I did some basic side-by-side search comparisons between Bing and Google.  At this early stage I can't really say that Bing stands out for me in terms of delivering more relevant search results.  Quite the contrary actually, Google is the clear winner.  As a quick example, I ran a search for "fixing a kitchen sink" (without quotes) in both engines.  On Google's first page of the search results I obtained nearly 100% relevancy for my search query (example of interesting results: "how to install a kitchen sink", "how to repair a kitchen sink", "how to fix a kitchen sink, "how to replace a kitchen sink", and so on...).

Bing, on the other hand, returned at most two search results that I considered "worth looking into".  One of them is a 5-minute video on how to repair a kitchen sink.  But the remaining 98%+ of Bing's search results are links to companies and stores that sell or repair sinks.

Still the early stages for Bing, but hard to win me over at this point.  Bing needs to focus heavily on search relevancy IMO.  Hope that improves in the weeks and months to come.

Yann

Like Yann, I too did some side by side comparisons.  I got far better results with Google than I did with Bing.  I will periodically use Bing as a second option if I am unable to find what I need with Google.  Hopefully it will get better at what it is purported to do. 

I wonder if search results are "graded" on the number of clickthroughs? In other words, if you click on a link as a result of a web search, it makes sense that it would accure points vs a provided search result that a user does NOT click on.

If this is the case, the Bing results will likely improve over time.