After sticking to Bing as my primary search engine these last few weeks, I can say, with no doubt, that Microsoft has something great here.
When it came to shopping and general non-technical related queries, I was very pleased with what Bing was dishing out. However, even with my positive experiences these last few weeks, I often resorted to Google when it came to technical and deeper searches, especially when needing my answer within the first 2 pages.
It may be unusual to say, but if Microsoft leverages Bing well, it can own the general-population-search-engine niche. That is, it's on it's way to be that search engine you'd tell your grandmother or an ex-AOL-er to use over Google. The clean layout, the lack of clutter, the sub-divisions within the results page (which could use a background gradient bar Microsoft) definitely simplify search finds. Furthermore, since most people spend their time performing searches to shop and read news, this engine not only does it both, but does each very well.
With all that said, many of my favorite Bing features came with a downside.
Bing partnered with Wolfram|Alpha to handle queries on nutrition and diet. So a search on "carbs in soda" places the answer "14 grams" as the first answer on the results page with a byline "Computed by Wolfram|Alpha". It's pretty cool, and realistically, that's usually what someone is searching for. However, generally speaking, I'd probably be doing this search on my smartphone, but when testing, an exact search on my smartphone did not get me the same Wolfram|Alpha result. The UI and layout for Mobile Bing look fantastic, but a lack of consistency can hurt it's chances of holding users across platforms.
Visual Search
While very cool, I was surprised that even though "U.S. Presidents" was listed in the Visual Search library, a query on "U.S. Presidents" does not activate or bring up the Visual Search feature in the results listing (like it does on a search on "dog breeds"). It's unclear to me if some queries are limited to the library, or if this is a buggy query, nevertheless, expansion of this feature would help Bing add some "coolness" to it's already sleek interface.
Bing and Maps
Another place where I was surprised to see Bing hiccup was with Maps. I live in a Hispanic neighborhood in New York, and to test results I performed a search on "spanish food, 10032", searching for Latin restaurants closest to my area. Bing's first 10 results were all odd. Among the first 10, there were 5 restaurants in New Jersey (across the river, and an $8 toll away), and while the rest were in New York, of those 5, only 1 was within a mile of my address (or delivery distance), two others were in completely different boroughs/counties. Really poor results - especially when I know that every other block in within this zip code has a Spanish/Latin eatery of some sort.
"Okay", I thought, "maybe it's some weird thing with the area". So I did the same search in Google's Maps, and while the closest were not listed among the first 10, all results were in New York, 3 were within 1 mile, and surprisingly, Google somehow squeezed in some farther, but still fairly local popular restaurants. Albeit it listed them arbitrarily - not by alphabet, nor by rating, and neither by distance, it just knew which one's were popular enough to recommend.
When it came to shopping though, Bing rocked. Buying plane tickets was an exciting challenge, testing Bing's predictor and 30-day outlook features. Also, Bing partners with huge brands to get customers cash back on purchases made through their portal.
In the end, I'd still place Bing second to Google. Realistically though, it's unfair to place it in the same ring with Google already. Bing's a baby, only being public since May of this year, by comparison, Google's just got it's Bachelor's and is currently working on it's Ph.D. There is no doubt that Google's going to lose a small share of it's searches to Bing, but similarly, Bing has some growing up to do. And judging by the direction it's gone so far, Bing's future in bright - bright like bling-bling (too soon? too corny?).
Comments