There’s been substantial fanfare about the release of Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. By some measurements, such as Stats Counter, Bing is grabbing marketshare from Google and has the potential to supersede Yahoo in search traffic in the US and globally.
Have You Tried Bing For Yourself?
If you want to compare it to Google, use www.bing-vs-google.com. This simple, useful tool allows you to run queries through both engines simultaneously and watch side by side results. We recommend horizontal comparisons because it works best with some of Bing’s pop up preview features.
What will you find? Bing is very attentive to usability.
Easy Image Filtering.
Like Google, Bing can filter by image size, color or black & white, faces versus other types of images, but it does it with one click instead of with dropdowns, makes those features more useable. Search “milwaukee art museum” in www.bing-vs-google.com, then choose “Images” in top navigation.
At-A-Glance Video Results
Instead of returning video results in one long text heavy panel, Bing returns a table of video start images with captions. Run them side by side and you’ll notice the text associated with video searches is often nonsensical anyway. Search “skydiving” in www.bing-vs-google.com, then choose “Videos” in top navigation.
Click To Preview Unnecessary
Point to a search result and a pop-up summarizes the text surrounding your search term. Something similar has been possible in Google with a Firefox plug in for a while, but Bing makes it intuitive. Search for your name in www.bing-vs-google.com, then mouse over to the right side of Bing’s search results.
Prominent Related Searches
Bing positions a “Related Searches” box on the left hand panel, a more convenient place than the bottom of the page links that Google similarly offers. Search for your favorite actor or actress in www.bing-vs-google.com, and compare Bing’s left panel with Google’s page bottom.
In Depth Search Categories
Bing also positions subcategories in the left panel, and they’re more useful, too. Google subcategories match up to portions of the single important site about the subject of a search. Bing subcategories in left navigation extend across all sites, although under individual sites they retain site-specific subcategories. Search for your sports team in www.bing-vs-google.com to compare.
News Alerts
Bing allows you to create alerts on the fly from their news results within their search results, as long as you have a Microsoft Live account, of course. Try a current events search.
Of course, technology quickly evolves among major players, and we’d expect Google to learn from and quickly react to Bing’s features and usability strengths.
Enjoy searching!
Rob Sieracki
Director of Paid Search
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