HispanicBusiness

Well fun seekers, Microsoft is at it again. It seems that they are trying everything to get web surfers away from Google. This time Microsoft is attacking them directly by going after the Google search engine itself. They are doing this with a new search engine of their own: Bing (http://bing.com).

I am writing this in July, just about a month after Microsoft released Bing. Though still the new guy on the block, Bing has made some inroads. To be honest, it is a great improvement over the LiveSearch engine it replaces. Reports are that all major search engines have seen their users decrease a bit. The percentages of searches on a given search engine as of this writing are: Google, 81.22%; Yahoo, 9.21%; Bing, 5.31%; all others, 4.26%. Will Bing catch on enough to make "Binging" a part of our language? It will be interesting to see how this develops.

At First Glance

We have all seen the Google search page. It is simple and white with a search box above the center. Above left you can change the search from the Web to Images, Video, Maps, News, Shopping, Gmail and more. The Bing page still has the search box, but the similarity ends there. The background on the Bing page is a picture from some (usually) far and distant land. If you mouse-over the image, little factoid boxes appear that give more information and links to popular subjects related to that country. The normal links to images, videos, shopping, news, and maps are listed down the left side under a heading called Explore.

I guess that it is neat to have a nice looking search portal, but I search to find information. Remember, when you type a term in a search engine and press return you are not searching the web but rather the database of web sites already retrieved by the search engine. I thought that I would try to see if there was a difference in the number of results. My name brought up 6,430 results in Bing and 35,000 in Google.

The search term "AECT" produced 133,000 results in Bing and 278,000 in Google. And the results were different. Both did have AECT.org as the first entry (thank you!) but after that the results were very different. Google went to AECT conventions, then on to the Association of Electric Companies of Texas, but tended to show more of our AECT on their first page. Bing also went directly to Texas but continued away from our AECT to compressed earth block machines, Auckland Energy Consumer Trust, etc. Interesting enough, though, was that AECTnow.org was number six in the Bing results. I looked at the first five pages on Google and did not find AECTnow listed. Remember though that Bing is initially concentrating its efforts on health, travel, shopping and local businesses. Bing even has a cashback option when you purchase from certain vendors through a search.

Search Note: How you search is important: "Association for Educational Communications and Technology" yielded 33,800,000 hits from Bing and 12,200,000 from Google. Don't ask me why.

I liked the little factoids on the first page, though they were diversions, but Bing has some other neat features. Place the curser over a thumbnail of a video and it starts to play automatically. Click the thumbnail and it opens and starts to play. Type in a company name and the first listing is the company's customer-service phone number - very handy! Type in the name of your favorite team and the most recent score and upcoming game schedule appears right on top. Bing also has a list of words along the left side of the results that help you refine your search. Just add Twitter to the end of your search terms and you will get a list of recent tweets. This is a really great feature for information on people and items in the news.

So what do you think? I for one (a Mac person) like Bing. It is fun and easy to use. Most of the chatter online seems to concur. (I know this because I Googled "Bing Google comparison.") Do I like it enough to change from Google? Probably not. I may Bing as a backup since the results are different and I guess that time will tell which one seems to be the most useful for my search needs. I would definitely tell you to go to Bing.com and try it out. Your first stop should be the "Tour Bing" link in the upper left hand corner.