Microsoft Bing (Spring 2012)

It's undeniable that Google does a great job at quickly providing useful Web links and more. Yet I'm often surprised at how unwilling people are to even experiment with another search site. Underdog Bing from software veteran Microsoft has been innovating and offering its own twist on this central Internet activity since 2009. It's gotten to the point where most people would probably not even notice if you switched search-engine results on them, and blind search tests and some other studies point to Bing delivering preferred results.

The site has not been without its successes: According to Experian and comScore, Bing has overtaken Yahoo as the number-two search engine. Of course, Bing's search technology now powers Yahoo, so you could add that sites numbers, putting Bing-powered US share at about 30 percent versus Google's 65 percent.

The highlight of Bing's latest attempt to win favor over Google is its new integration of social networking with search. But the service's designers are also working on the underlying technology to understand queries better and deliver results faster. Bing's Stefan Weitz told me that they were working on a "connecting the real world to the digital world," building an entity engine code-named Satori that attaches relevant terms and relationships to objects, and then tags relevant Web pages with the object ID. So far, they've added over 300 million objects ranging from wine bottles to PC monitors. It's an offshoot of the "semantic Web" concept, which tries to categorize things and ideas rather than simply scan text on Web pages for terms.

The point of all this new plumbing as well as the new social network integration is to make Bing's new slogan?Bing is for doing?a reality. The site is a lot more than straight Web search. Hitting the Explore link at top left gives you an idea of the sites multifarious roles: Entertainment, News, Maps, Social, Finance, Videos, Local, Shopping, Travel, Translator, and more. We'll dive into several of these as the review progresses. The new social tools will be rolled out to all users by this June, and users can head to www.bing.com/new to be notified of its availability.

Interface
Google Doodles get all the noise, but every single day you can see an often dazzling and always enlightening image on the Bing home search page. The image doesn't affect the page load time, as it loads after the search box. Occasionally it will even come to life as a short video, and mouseover links always lead to more photos, maps, and info on the photo subject. The home page has a menu along the top for vertical search like Images, Videos, Shopping, News, Maps, Travel, Entertainment. You can also check your search history (if you've logged in), Hotmail, and MSN from menu items here. On the left you'll see your login accounts, Bing Rewards point total (more later), and search settings, such as safe search.

Like any other self-respecting, up-to-date search engine, start typing in the search box and you'll see suggestions drop down. You don't get Google's Instant results, but frankly, that can often just be a distraction, and most people I've asked don't use it, instead simply typing their whole query in before looking at the results. Another behavior in Bing that I definitely prefer is that when you switch, say, from Web search to news search, Bing maintains your search term and applies it to the new function. With Google, if I search "sports car" and then click the News link at top, I get the day's general news and have to type "sports car" again to see news related to that term.

One of Bing's real contributions to Web search, which was copied by Google, was the consistent sidebar it placed along the left rail of the result page. With the latest revision, this is gone from Bing. Gone also are the site text previews you used to see when you hovered the mouse over a result entry. Google now shows a large thumbnail of each site when you do this, complete with images. This gives you a visual clue, in case seeing the design jogs your memory that, yes that's the site I wanted. The removal of these thumbnails is part of a cleanup at Bing, which also put the ax to the tab filters above results, and a trimming down of the Bing daily image border to a sliver at the top.

Bing intends to replace the quick information encapsulation that site preview used to provide with Snapshot. This feature isn't yet implemented though, so I couldn't test it myself. I did get a demo of it. A Snapshot arrow will show up when you search for a restaurant, hotel, movie or event, or person. You'll see ratings, business hours, maps, and even interior panoramas for the establishments, and social network info for people searches.

Results
As I mentioned at the outset, most users wouldn't notice a difference in the quality of search results between Bing and Google. Both are perfectly capable of turning up any fairly well-known site. Blind taste tests have even shown that more users actually find Bing's results more useful. You can try such a test for yourself with BlindSearch. I've occasionally not found the result I was looking for, and sometimes Google would get it for me. The fact that so many sites try to game Google for higher placement through SEO could actually be an advantage for a non-Google search engine. Other extended tests, too, like Conrad Saam's in Search Engine Land have shown the results too close to call a clear winner.

What differentiates today's Web search is how the results are enhanced. For example, I searched for "lobster bisque recipe" and at the top of Bing's results was a Bing Recipes choice. Google helpfully listed ingredients, cook time, and calories along the left rail, while clicking into Bing Recipes laid out this information attractively. When I switched gears and typed USS Indianapolis into the search bar, Google found nothing, since the search wasn't recipe-related, while Bing had no trouble switching gears to World War II battleships. (This relates to a usability issue with Google News I mention below?an inability to shift gears.)

One option I definitely prefer in Google is the abilty to specify a date range to search for. Bing has done away with its sidebar, and thereforeany search refinements like those offered by Google's search tools. Yahoo, too, will let you restrict a search by past day, week, or month, but Google is the clear winner here.

A search for the Mets' ailing shortstop Ruben Tejada had Bing displaying his stats and performance in the most recent three games, while in Google I had to click through to one of the Web results to get this info. The first Google result was Wikipedia, rather than a sports-specific site. In fact, though it's amazing for both search engines how many results come from Wikipedia. You might as well just start with that online encyclopedia for many of your searches.

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