Microsoft, recently launched a new search engine called Bing! It is currently in beta format. With Google dominating the world of search engines, does the new offering from Microsoft stand a chance?
If you read the marketing notes about Bing, it states it has a new look and feel. Yet for my money, the search engine home page, had more than a passing resemblance to Google’s. The only real difference was that there is a picture in the background, and the word ‘Bing’, was used instead of Google.
To see what kind of results Bing would give me, I typed in the name of my website, without out the ‘www’s or the ‘.co.uk’ part. I happen to know that should you search for this on Google, I am number one on the page rank.
On Bing I did not even feature on the first page, and by the time I reached page six, I gave up. In fact comparing the results of Bing and Google, apart from the odd site, the two search engines did not correspond at all.
This is interesting, because this shows that bing searches on a different criteria to Google.
As Apple and Microsoft have often ‘borrowed’ from each other for the developments of their operating systems, so it appears Microsoft have borrowed from Google. Images, Maps, and Shopping, are all available in very similar formats on Bing.
A nice touch from Bing is that if you hold your mouse over one of the page listings it gives you a brief preview of the site. So you can tell if its what you were looking for.
Taking on Google, does feel a little pointless, not only do Google do a sterling job but they are everybody’s favourite search engine by a mile.
For Bing to have a chance, it will need to provide either an alternative way to perform searches, and so present results that are more relevant than what Google provides. Or copy Google completely, but provide more features and services.
Do you feel Bing will be the search engine of the future?
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If Bing has the same quality as other Microsoft products, or even the “Help” search function on Vista, then Google can not only sleep safely but also open a bottle of Dom Perignon.
You didn’t get many results on Bing for you site because you need to register and put code on your site for Bing to do a full search. When I did this, my rank skyrocketed on Bing.
This shows that Bing is far inferior to Google.