Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 01 June 2009 19:11
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
Microsoft’s brand new search engine, Bing, has not only burst earlier
onto the scene that was being let on, it has thus far avoided Cuil’s
launch fate – but with the launch less than 24 hours old, it’s far too
early to tell!
Bing. It’s finally here, and a lot of people’s initial impressions are that, actually… it’s pretty good!
Bing appears to offer results “as good as” or comparable to Google on general searches, while introducing new ways to automatically categorise, present and preview information to you in the initial search result.
Bing doesn’t explicitly offer the “did you mean” query that Google does, but instead says, when having searched for “Gogle”, the following: “Results are included for
google. Show just the results for gogle.”
Google offers its new “related searches” at the bottom of each page – Microsoft offers it on the left hand side, sort of like an Explorer window’s “task pane”.
If you’re looking for “Sydney Opera House”, for example, related results come up with Shows, opening house, history, opened by, photos, rooms, and box office tickets on the left, where it’s much more visible, as opposed to Google’s bottom of the page placement.
Perhaps Google just has more confidence in its results, but it does seem a handy feature that Google could already offers and could easily re-arrange if it so desired – but how to do so without being accused of now “copying” Microsoft?!
After you’ve searched for a while, you get to see a “search history” so you can quickly go back to previous searches, something you can easily clear, switch off, or view in more detail.
Searching for a popular signer also brought up added search refinement detail in the left pane on tours, albums, videos, songs, images, tickets and a fan club, all things supposed to help users find the answer they’re looking for faster, by trying to anticipate how the initial search will be refined next, if needed.
In addition, it’s possible to get an additional preview. On the right hand side, you can see an orange dot at the end of each search result. Hover the mouse over that dot, and a small amount of preview text from the site pops up, giving you that extra bit of information that could help you instantly decide whether the site is the one, or not, needing extra investigation first.
What’s one new Bing feature that hasn’t debuted yet – and what other cool stuff does Bing offer?
Please read on to page 2!
