what is Bing?
You’ve seen the ads on TV, but you still don’t know what it is. In a nutshell, Bing is a revamped (it used to be Live Search) search engine that Microsoft is marketing as a “decision engine.” – …”helping customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.”
Bing definitely has some kinks to work out in terms of being able to deliver what it’s advertising. I clicked on “tour bing” and then checked out “wondering what’s new in your neighborhood?” which is supposed to give me restaurants and services that I can walk to. I entered “pediatrician” and got the about.com page, the wikipedia definition, info on how to become a pediatrician. Nothing local – unless you count the local maps display at the bottom of the page. Same for “spa.” What Bing did was send me to a page displaying “All Results,” instead of filtering out anything that wasn’t local – which is just silly considering the path I took (what’s new in your neighborhood?) to get there and that local business search is supposed to be one of Bing’s key deliverables.
From a design standpoint, Bing is a good deal prettier than Google, but at this point, it doesn’t offer anything cool enough for the average user to make the switch. Although, if you’re like me, you may find yourself checking out both engines to see the differences in their results (just in case I’m missing something) – but then again, this is what I do for a living.
Check out this article from Search Engine Land for a more comprehensive look at Bing’s features.
June 30th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Cool post, just subscribed.
July 24th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Thanks for posting about this, I would love to read more about this topic.