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A Review of Bing.com: Microsoft’s new “decision” engine

Posted July 8, 2009 By Nick Weynand |

Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.com, has come with a lot of hype, media coverage and a very expensive advertising campaign. The recent launch of Bing is another attempt by Microsoft to take on a search engine market thoroughly dominated by Google.

Microsoft is touting its new product as a “decision engine” and claims that it helps people make decisions, not just find search results. In my review of Bing, I found this to be somewhat true. The search does seem smarter, offering up new features not available on other search engines. Whether they truly help people make better decisions and whether Microsoft can cut into Google’s market share will become evident with time.

For now I’d like to walk you through some of Bing’s new features and let you decide if you’re ready to make the switch.

Suggestions as you type

Bing offers the nice feature of suggesting search terms as you type. This is helpful if you’re not quite sure how to spell something or if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for.

Categorized search

Once you’ve decided what you’re searching for, clicked submit and landed on a search results page, Bing categorizes searches based on what type of information you seek. For example, if you search for a person’s name (for example “Phyllis Diller”), regular search results are displayed along with categories for images, videos, news, quotes, etc. This is really helpful if it’s a certain type of content you’re after.

Scorecards

Bing not only searches the Web, but it crawls review sites such as Yelp.com and CitySearch.com to offer up important information on businesses. For example, search for “barbeque in Austin, Texas” and then click on “Local”, and you’ll get information on ratings, price, payment and parking (among others) without ever leaving the search results page. This feature is great, however you’d only know about this feature if you knew to click on the “Local” option.

Related searches

Related search terms are nothing new, but Bing offers a nice list of them down the left-hand side of the search results. It also keeps track of your search history so that you can easily return to a search you’ve made in the past.

More info pop-up

Hovering your mouse cursor over the right side of a search listing will open a pop-up with more information about the listing. This will allow you to peek behind the click and save time if you’re not going to find what you’re looking for.

Maps

In my opinion, Bing’s maps feature offers several advantages over Google Maps. It offers an aerial as well as a “bird’s eye” view with a more three-dimensional effect. Users also have the ability to rotate the map in any direction. Sadly, one thing that’s missing (or maybe it just wasn’t easy to find) is the 360-degree street view that Google offers. On the upside, the map images seem to load faster, scroll smoother and are more detailed than Google Maps. If I don’t use anything else on Bing, I am switching to Bing Maps until Google follows suit.

Images

Bing’s image search offers some nice (although not ground-breaking) features. On a results page, users can view a thumbnail and slightly larger version of the image upon hovering with the mouse cursor. There’s also a link to show similar images and, when clicked, the Web page containing the image is frame-loaded inside Bing so that you never lose your place. You can also filter your search results by size, layout color, style and people.

Video

Bing’s video search is nice. After pulling up a page of search listings, you can preview videos without ever leaving the page, just by hovering your mouse cursor over the video thumbnail. Upon clicking you can view a larger version of the video inside Bing. Much like the image search, you can filter your video results by length, screen size, resolution and source.

Shopping

The shopping search pulls up your standard product listing with price comparisons. Bing also offers user and expert reviews on products within the search listings. This makes it easy to compare products in just a few clicks.

News

I found nothing special about Bing’s news search, expect for the categorization and filtering that we’ve seen in other sections.

Travel

Bing’s travel search does a nice job of integrating several travel sites through a familiar looking interface. Users can compare airline and hotel pricing without leaving the search engine. Microsoft has also integrated its “Faircast technology” to allow users to predict when flight prices may increase. I can see Bing’s travel search becoming a useful tool on my next vacation.

In summary, Bing is a very well thought-out and well-executed search engine. It offers many new features and improves on old ones. This should make finding content quicker, easier and more enjoyable. Will it upstage Google any time soon? I seriously doubt it, but I commend Microsoft’s effort. I recommend giving it a try and deciding if you’re ready to make the switch.

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3 Responses to “A Review of Bing.com: Microsoft’s new “decision” engine”

1. Posted July 9th, 2009 at 7:24 am, by Nick Weynand

   After actually shopping for a real product that I needed using Bing Shopping, it appears that they have some issues to work out. The filtering seemed to not return all of the results and the total results changed a couple times from one page to another without changing the filter. Hopefully they will continue to work these issues out.

2. Posted July 10th, 2009 at 3:27 pm, by Tiffany

   Doesn’t google suggest as you type?

3. Posted July 10th, 2009 at 3:28 pm, by Tiffany

   i guess google has shopping, images and maps, etc. so, nevermind!

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