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How Well Does Bing Handle New Stuff?  (View post)

Nathania Johnson [PersonRank 0]

Tuesday, June 2, 2009
15 years ago7,382 views

There are some "new stuff" that Google doesn't handle very well at all. They sat out last year's Olympics while Microsoft and Yahoo served up instant answers.

Also, Google Maps was woefully behind on the Georgia crisis when it broke last summer, while Microsoft had thorough details on the politically volatile region.

I agree that Bing does need to do a better job, but Google's working with more data. I don't know how a search engine overcomes that.

Microsoft's approach for awhile has been to go after niches, and I think we're seeing nice things from them in travel and shopping. But it will be hard to make it stick without those more random searches.

imma [PersonRank 3]

15 years ago #

hmm, why *are* Microsoft doing search ...

I think they feel the web is something they need to be part of and that searching is, for the web, some sort of equivalence of an operating system for the desktop – it lets you access things you like/want/need. So they need a way to keep in the loop – if they didn't have a search engine then other companies could effectively weaken their position, not by cutting them out completely, but just by the subtle preference for other styles of web systems by the users of these other search engines who may feel the experience matches their expected behaviour better when it is by the same company

Fortunately they seem to have made a fast, clear & (by brief inspection) good product which I hope will keep them in the competition (while not being good enough to discourage them from integrating to other companies systems)

milivella [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> And if they do ever catch up, isn’t there a good chance Google already reached the next level by then?

Nice that we both thought about your 2-year-old-but-still-great post in the same hours:
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/155372.html#id155377
:)

pickle [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

Bing did the right thing by putting related searches and groupings at the top left and shopping results at the bootom. I think Google has it wrong by putting related searches at the bottom of the page. Google should be screaming the F-word given what every eye-tracking study has shown.

With Bing, one can quickly target a search better. A quickly targeted search allows for better ad targeting. Better ad targeting means more effective ads. More effective ads means mo money for Microsoft.

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]pickle:
I remember that Google experimented with showing related searches at the top left/right long before Bing existed, back in 2007.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ZaGO7GjCqAI/RweN4zsvN8I/AAAAAAAAFXQ/Z5iEfuvIB3k/s640/experimental-navig.png

http://searchengineland.com/google-experimental-opt-in-to-google-user-interface-experiments-11234

Even Ask.com's interface from 2007 showed suggestions in the left sidebar:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/06/askcoms-unified-search-engine.html

Both Google and Ask.com dropped those interfaces.

Petr Buben [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

so if Google has now Blog search of "last hour" .. Im sure they will have soon a regular, web search of "last x" .... they should better designate, assign good domains to their searches and features .. its so many, who can ever find it all ? ..... for example, is blogsearch.goolge.com might get some shorter /Google shortener is where??/ name .. htp://kl.am/gmo

pickle [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]Ionut Alex. Chitu

Google did not entirely drop the interface.
An interface appears when you select Show Options in Google .

Google must see something in displaying related searches on the right-hand side. Its there, but you have to click a few times to get to it.

Ask just sucked.

Semantically, Bing appears to do well.
A search for "new york times square church" is on the money.

WebSonic.nl [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/02/search-smackdown-bing-vs-google/

Sam Gibbs [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

I think there is a slight bug with your comparision thingymabob (http://www.blackdog.ie/google-bing/search.php).

For example, type in Father's day. You appear to get an almost identical set of results from both search engines. However, the search comparision is hiding one of bing's nicer features. Go to bing.com and type in father's day. Surprise! It'll tell you the actual father's day date of this year, along with a countdown to when it is.

That kind of feature is very useful. Rather then giving you a generic list of 10 links and hoping that one of those websites will provide your answer, bing shows you exactly what you're looking for without you having to dig anymore.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I don't get any special onebox when entering [father's day] at Bing.com. However, I do notice that the comparison tool has a bug when the query contains a ' – it wrongly escapes it. (I contacted them over this.)

Edit: They fixed the ' bug now.

Sam Gibbs [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

Phillip, I think you're missing something. Here's what I get when I type in father's day to bing.com (make sure you're on the home page!) Here's a screenshot.

http://img34.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fathersdaybing.png

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Indeed I don't get that... I'm in Germany and have set Bing to US, but perhaps it's Microsoft doing geolocation (in all the wrong ways).

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

When I search for [father's day], the "see more results" link sends me to a search results page for a different query:

www.bing.com/search?q=%5bInterestingTuple%3a1%3a0
%3a0%3a1%3a71%5d+word%3a(father%27s+fathers)+
day&qpvt=father%27s+day&first=6&FORM=O4RE

(join the three lines)

fullFx [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

i found bing much better than google in two aspects.

1. news search
i tried a day old indian news in both bing and google. google couldn't find any but bing got one.

2. name search
whenever i try googling for my name, google asks "did you mean" . bing had no such trouble. he correctly listed results against my name

detailed observation discussed here : http://kasolutions.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/bing-says-microsoft-to-google/

-- fullFx
fullfx.antzfx.com

Brandon [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

It's funny that you mention Bing doesn't do well at very new stuff; I've been hearing for months that this is exactly Google's weakness and that this is where Twitter search beats Google search most of the time.

Perhaps there's a fine line between "very new" and "real-time", but I don't think so.

Mandy [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

I agree with FullFX. I found some useful things thanks to Bing. I've never could find them before thanks to Google. It's great to see new and better search engine like Bing!

Rohit Srivastwa [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

This is a nice one ;)
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/1696/bing2.jpg

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> It's funny that you mention Bing doesn't do well at very new stuff;
> I've been hearing for months that this is exactly Google's
> weakness and that this is where Twitter search beats Google
> search most of the time.

I did a strictly comparative test: Google vs Bing, who does better on recent stuff. That Google could still be more real-time is absolutely true, but that doesn't make Bing any better because Bing is also not more real-time. In a way that was my point: this is one of the next hurdles Google may need to take in the future, but where does that leave Bing when Bing doesn't yet have even Google's speed today?

Veky [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> which problem are they trying to solve? Which deficiencies of Google do they want to make up for, what niche are they trying to target, in which ways do they want to offer more to users than Google already does?

I think you're asking all the wrong questions. ;-P Which problem did they try to solve with Windows? With Internet Explorer? With Xbox? They are Microsoft. The only problem they are going to solve is getting a heap of money from as broad market as possible (not that it's an easy problem:). Niches – God forbid. Offering more to users? That could be disastrous. ;-]

WebSonic.nl [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Bing vs Google vs Yahoo: the Blind search engine test

"At first, there were direct side-by-side comparisons, but of course there’s no better challenge than a double-blind experiment.

Michael Kordahi, which I feel compelled to disclose is a Microsoft employee, has set up such an experiment, dubbed “BlindSearch” which you can try here. On the site, you enter a single search query which results three sets of unbranded results. After viewing the results, you are given an option to vote on one set of results, which then reveals the provider and adds it to the tally."

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090607/bing-vs-google-vs-yahoo-blind-search-engine-test/

WebSonic.nl [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

http://blindsearch.fejus.com/

Grega M [PersonRank 2]

15 years ago #

It is strange that google's results are not exactly the same as results from Google home page... Not very different, but still...

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

http://blogoscoped.com/forum/155453.html#id155709

Everytime I use that I choose Yahoo! Wow, I never thunk it...

WebSonic.nl [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Hmm i've voted two times on Bing... I must admit although Google will still be my default search engine :-).

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Discussion of Blind Search continues at http://blogoscoped.com/forum/155714.html

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