A few weeks ago, I was in Seattle listening to Dr. Qi Lu wax poetics about his new work-baby, Bing, the world’s first Decision Engine.  There was skepticism brewing as I listened to how this engine would function in the Google-lovin’ life I lead; how would Bing, ultimately, become something I NEED?

That is, in fact, why I think Google has had the success it’s had: we, its users, NEED it.  It started as a search engine; a plain white box of possibility.  It added all the other little accessories later (i.e. Gmail, Google docs, Reader).  Bing, conversely, is starting full-throttle before a backdrop of Live Search and MSN.  To me, it seems too muddy when compared to Google’s pure beginnings.

[Disclaimer: I know Google isn’t perfect; my touting is only for comparative effect.]

This fact is not lost on Bing; they’ve set a five-year timeline to be the second most popular engine (they’re not even fooling themselves that they may ever take Google’s market share lead), and they commenced a $80 to $100 million advertising campaign.  Bing, it seems, is Microsoft’s last ditch effort with search.

My sentiment before starting this week of Google-free search?  Bing will fail.  And Santa Claus isn’t real.

 

• Wednesday, 1:33 PM –

So my boss just emailed the company with instructions to switch from Google to Bing for a week for our online search needs.  After I stopped throwing up, my journey into the wilderness began as I installed the add-on to change my default engine to Bing.  So far the sky hasn’t fallen in on me, but there’s a strange little lower-case “b” where the strong and reliable upper-case “G” used to be.  I won’t lie: there is fear.  Secretly, I’m stowing canned goods just in case.

 

• Wednesday, 2:20 PM –

We’ve been instructed to put on ‘Bing’-folds and search the abyss using nothing but our gut instincts.  I’m fearful of hitting trees with my face and being attacked by raccoons.  The relief is palpable as I realize, in all actuality, we’re to complete ten searches using this handy dandy trickster of a Web site.  It displays search results from Bing, Google, and Yahoo, but doesn’t tell you which are which until you’ve selected the most appealing ten blue links.  We then document which engines we chose for each query and send it back to our boss (where he will undoubtedly complete more psychological testing on his minions).

My results?  I chose Google and Yahoo each four times, and Bing twice.

 

• Wednesday, 5:38 PM –

I just attempted to find Rocky’s blog, which I like to read from time to time for a healthy dose of wit.  I don’t know the URL exactly, nor do I have it bookmarked; my ability to find it, therefore, relies on searching with the query vicarious rocky.

This works like a charm in Google.  In Bing?  Not so much.  I started searching with vicarious rocky…nothing; vicarious rocky blog…mmm nothing; vicarious rocky lewis blogspot…nothing?  For real?  That tail won’t grow any longer, Bing.  That’s all you get.

Finally, I found Sage’s blog that mentioned Rocky’s blog, which is now effectively bookmarked because you can’t find it for crap in Bing because Bing sucks it hard right now.

 

• Friday, 12:33 PM –

This morning and afternoon is devoted to updating information in Google.  To get to the appropriate page, I’ve effectively Binged Google Business Center about ten times.  Google’s in the shower now, scrubBing off the shame.

 

• Sunday, 6:31 PM –

At present, I am rifling through images held for the query beautiful old houses, because I enjoy looking at things I want and can’t afford.  While I do not believe Bing and I are soul mates, I admit Bing’s image search is superior to that of Google.  First, scanning image results does not require me to travel to pages 2, 3, 4, or 358, for that matter; I need only to scroll downwards.  Second, it is possible to mouse-over an image and have it expand for easier viewing prior to following the link; this also displays the file size, image size, and destination URL.  Finally, the left-hand side of the results pages allows me to filter by size, layout, color, style, and people-properties.  Not too shabby, Bing.  Not too shabby at all.

 

• Tuesday, 9:34 AM –

My first foray into Bing maps.  Bing, buddy, your maps suck.  Navigating from a destination query to a final map view is unintuitive and elicits a semi-complete list of potential destinations.

The query used was TGIF Fridays Akron Ohio (please, no judgments; I just needed to know, OKAY).  This pulled the top three results, accompanying a link to full results.  On the full results pages, listings A, B, and C are sponsored listings from YellowPages, with the remaining numerically identified listings below.

Side note: I wonder how these results display on a search placement report; it would feel odd to tell a client they’ve ranked A for their top terms.

So there’s the map with the numbers and letters marking locations; I click on one, expecting to move to a larger view on a click-and-drag-able interface.  Ho ho!  Noooo.  Instead I go to YellowPages.com and their little page about this particular restaurant.

Okay, Bing?  Yeah, I wanted a MAP and you gave me WEB SITE.  So if you could just stop doing that from now on, that’d be great.  Thanks a bunch!

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A week later…

Dear Bing,

This past week has been interesting, and I really feel as though I’ve given you a fair shake for the moment.  Maybe in time we’ll be better suited for each other, but you’re just not ready.

Look, it’s not me, it’s you.  You have no sense of direction (your map interface is atrocious), you never give me what I want (only what you think I want), and I’m just not finding what I’m looking for from you.

We can still see each other from time to time (for image searches), but I’m afraid my heart belongs to Google.

Love,

Joanna

Original photo “Moleskine a quadretti e grafite” by hummyhummy on Flickr.

The world of search engines is constantly changing and a couple of weeks ago when Microsoft announced it was retiring Live Search and launching the ‘decision engine’ known as Bing, the world paused and wondered if they could live without Google. Last week at Sagerock, we switched to Bing and this is our story..

The Challenge: Use Bing for one week as your primary search engine.

The Goal: Understand Bing, what makes it better or worse and learn how it’s different from other search engines. At the end of the week, I asked for a brief summary of our staff’s experiences and then a blind search engine test which I’ll cover a bit later in the article.

When I first presented this challenge to the group, I was probably the biggest skeptic in the bunch. I never liked MSN/Live Search or the results it presented. I saw Microsoft present Bing at SMX Advanced and they didn’t seem to even get the concept of search or what people want out of it. That said, I thought we should give it a fair shot and knew that if we weren’t forced to change our habits, we never would.

So off we went, a week without Google. A week without a fix. I already felt anxious as I reached up to my Google Firefox toolbar and realized I didn’t have Bing or even Live installed:

So I installed the Official Bing Add-On for Firefox and I was ready to go:

Here are our takeaways (in brief) from our week with Bing followed by our blind test results:

Kate Falconer: In most cases, I found the information I was looking for and found it on the first page.  Although at first I thought it was interesting, I found that I didn’t really ever use that expanded view that they offer.  I don’t recall seeing any paid search ads.  When looking for local results, I came across a few at the top of the page that were for a different state.  Finally, I don’t like using the Map feature.  I had to go back to Google Maps to find what I was looking for.  I was trying to find a place to eat by somewhere I was heading and it wasn’t very helpful.

Angela Jones: Firstly, I do like the look of Bing. I like the images they choose for the main page and how on the results page it shows in the right corner. The top navigation bar however, just looks crammed up there and directly taken from Google. Granted horizontal navigation is a fantastic idea, bit they could have been more creative with its implementation. I also enjoy the related searches and the search history in the sidebar. Sometime when you get so deep into searching for things you forget what you have already looked for. I also like that when you go a very general search, such as for something like “music” you get headed suggestions below all results. I also like that since it was a very generic search, the local search map shows up at the bottom since more like then not you are not looking for something locally. I also like that when you do a search for something local, such as “Akron, Ohio bars” the local search map is then pushed to the top for you to see the location of local results on the map.

By far my favorite part of Bing overall though is the quick snapshot window. When I’m searching for something specific, sometimes having to wait for a page to load is really annoying. The window popping up to give me a nice overview of what is currently on the site itself is great. It gives me a much clearer view of whether or not the site is actually what I am looking for.

Overall I think Bing is okay. I expected a lot more from a search engine being rebranded and launched from Microsoft. I think a lot of the changes overall seem to be mostly aesthetic and could have made Live better, rather then giving up on an already released product. I don’t think however it is going to win me over from Google, at least not yet.

Sage Lewis: I took some notes using Bing on my phone:
I was able to set my location on my phone. But searching for my hotel,
doubletree suites, gave me results in nyc.
A search for ‘doubletree suites lake buena vist’ gave me pics and the
address. The results are not formatted as nicely as Google. Google has
a map and reviews.
Bing has some links for my location. But the default weather is
celcius and I can’t figure out how to change it.
Local on my phone is really lacking. The game is now maps and reviews.
Bing shows a few pictures but I feel they are too early in the search
process. Local does not appear quite baked.

A search for ‘pizza’ in my ‘location’ gives me a wikipedia listing and
2 local listings with no reference point.

Joe Abraham:

General Searches: I’m not sure if I like the compartmentalized results the Bing spits out. I think I like Google’s integrated results better for general terms. I also didn’t like how it gave me results for other queries as well. I guess if you are not a sophisticated searcher then this would be handy.

Long Tail Searches: Most of my searches are pretty long 4 words+. When you get to terms that big, the game is pretty similar no matter what engine you use. At this point a lot of features are stripped away like the suggested searches and most media. At this point it is nothing too special.

Image Search: I liked it better then Google’s Image search. Bing’s image search is nice because the results stay in a side frame. This is nice as I don’t have to hit the back button on the browser like I do in Google.

Maps: Typical MS product. I typed in “Akron Ohio Hotel” since it is an example I’ve used before. The number one result was in Wadsworth. I also putzed around with other maps searches and wasn’t happy with the results. The quick directions weren’t too bad, but I like Google’s detailed directions better as you can select alternate routes.

Video Search: I sort of like the little hover over preview. But it could get really annoying.

Search History: I like this feature! If I forget what I recently searched on to find something of interest, the list is right there.

Organic V. Paid: I noticed I’ve clicked a lot less paid listing in Bing then I normally do in Google. Either the layout encourages clicks on natural listings or they’re just not serving up as many paid results.

Brian Augsburger:  I am trying very hard to like bing… And I do like it, like it enough to switch? I doubt it.  I do appreciate the design, but I wonder if it will get stale after a while.  I think it is actually pretty clean and the results were pretty good, I especially enjoyed the times results were very limited.  Like only two results when I made a search; not sure how they did that but it was pretty shocking in a cool way.  I plan to give Bing another try, because I’m trying not to put all my eggs in one basket.

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As a brief aside, Joanna kept a journal of her experiences with Bing. We feel it warrants it’s own post so tune in next Monday to read about her indepth experiences.

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In addition to this week of using nothing but Bing, Joanna found a neat site:

http://blindsearch.fejus.com/

This is really cool because it allows you to perform a query and shows you results from Yahoo, Bing, and Google, but doesn’t tell you which is which. Then you choose the results you like the best. It’s interesting making decisions based on strength of results rather than preconceived ideas. It’s like a blind taste test for search!

The challenge: Try 10 queries  and keep a tally of which results you liked best.

The goal: Figure out which search engine gives the most relevant results over a variety of query types without knowing what engines results you are viewing.

Here are the results:

Each “X” above represents one persons vote for what engine gave the most relevant result for each query.

As you can tell, overall, people still feel that Google gives them the most relevant searches. Interestingly enough is that fact that not only did people feel that Bing gave them more relevant search results on some top level searches but other than a local search or some domain related info, I’m not sure why anyone would consider using Yahoo at all.

In the end, it doesn’t appear that Bing will be a Google Killer, but it might hasten Yahoo’s demise. I, for one, rarely missed Google at all during our separation.