So Bing has a good name that you can now replace “To Google Something” with “To Bing Something!” and has been getting tonnes of positive media coverage, but from the searcher’s point of view, what is the big fuss and why should I care? Well the good new is that Microsoft has done their homework this time and Bing is definitely a better search engine than the old live search service.
By in large, it is a very similar Search experience to Google in terms of the display layout and results relevancy which is a good thing. However, Bing has some cool innovations that Google currently does not have and I think not only improves on the Google design but really helps the searcher and I give Microsoft and the Bing Search team for thinking beyond the Google offering.
Sure the Bing search screen has nice interactive background that changes everyday, but for me, it’s all about the search results page!
Microsoft research apparently identified that one of biggest frustration in search today is in clicking through to a page, only to find it is not the right one so helping searcher identifying the correct page to click through on the results page was identified as a main area of focus for the Bing team.
I am happy to say that the focus on delivering useful information on the results page itself has been a good one and I think has delivered real tangible benefits for the searchers.
Now on to the Bing search results layout…
Whilst the Bing search results page looks similar to any other results page, the secret is revealed when you mouse over a particular result entry.
When your mouse is anywhere on top of a result, a vertical rule shows up at its right edge to visually clue you that this preview is available. Hovering the cursor to the right edge of any Web result brings up a small window containing text from the linked page. It can even find relevant deep links within that page. It’s great for getting a peek at pages that are relevant, and for helping avoid clicking through to pages that aren’t.
Furthermore, if the site contains malware, the Bing engine will also reveal that in the preview text window and let you make up your mind as to whether to visit the site.
If you don’t pay attention, you might actually miss this little feature, but I think it is a small clever innovation that actually works really really well!
The other nice touch is the placement of your Search history right on the results page to speed things up. I for one find I often re-run some of my previous searches so this is definitely another handy feature to have on the results page.
A bit of a tip for you if you are from outside of the USA, you should click here to switch to the USA version of Bing as I find some features were disabled with the Australian local version so I am guessing this might be the case with other local versions.
The Bing Image search and research tools of Bing also have some really cool features that makes it superior than the current Google offerings. I am planning on covering them soon so be sure to come back to check them out!
If you have not already checked out Bing, then You should most certainly have a go at the new Bing search engine! as I suspect you will be pleasantly surprised with the Bing search experience.
Tell us what you think about your Bing experience!
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Bing is good enough but needs more to beat Google!
Bing is a good attempt, I think the new results page is a good improvement on Google
I love the Bing Search engine. Better than Google. I am having one problem with ir which is serious. I decided to sign up for their Pay per click program an dfilled out all the information properly on two different days. When I hit the submit button a message comes up that they are having problems with their ad center.I got the same message two days in a row.If everyone else is having the same problem how do they expect to get new customers?
Bing is way more accurate than Google. G has become so complex that they’ve lost the plot when it comes to search relevance.