To Bing Or Not To Bing? A Complete Review
Microsoft launched Bing couple of days back in some of the European countries and now the site finally went live all over the world today! It has some interesting features like a different home page for different countries etc. But sadly, some of the new and unique features in Bing are still awaited in most countries. This strategy really surprises me; why won’t Bing like to bring together the hordes of incoming curious visitors under one common platform.
In India also, very limited functionality is available to the users as of now and the more promising functionalities like Shopping, Travel, News etc. are missing.
WATblog tweak:
You can go to this Bing worldwide page and switch your region to USA – English and voila! You can see all the tabs now.
We have already covered Bing in extensive details in our previous posts regarding Bing. Microsoft has puts all its egg in one basket and is pinning all hopes on Bing to grab back some share of the search market. So, here are the list of new features in Bing and our detailed review of the same.
New Explorer Pane
The search results are categorized into various web-groups and are included on the left side of the search page (big deal, really!) e.g. a search for “Mercedes” will add a left Navigation pane with groups categorized by Dealers, Accessories, Jobs, Sales etc. followed by “Related Searches” which shows what others users are searching for related to your search. It also has a super cool search history tab that shows what you have searched in past.
What’s Google up to?
Google might not have the neat navigation bar, but it has already started providing users with some neat auto-suggestions based on what they have searched in the past.
When it comes to searching for names e.g. “Aishwarya Rai” the results lead you to web groups like images, posters, biography, interviews, quotes etc. It also shows the Xrank for the name which is basically just an index for popularity of the name.
The result is a nice clutter free interface where people can easily pinpoint the info that they are looking for, for example if you already own a Mercedes and are searching for accessories, you can go to the accessories group and find related results. This simple innovation can go a long way in simplifying your decision making process.
Bing Travel
Bing introduces some cool concepts for users searching for travel offers on the go. You just need to go to the Travel tab and input source, destination and date of travel; Bing will bring the search results from a complete mashup of travel related websites like travel sites, airways sites and various travel agents to serve you the best deals on the platter! It’s nothing revolutionary but Bing here is trying to establish itself as a single destination for everything.
Bing Travel is powered by Farecast technology which was acquired by Microsoft in 2008. Farecast uses a predictive algorithm to predict when and from where should users buy their tickets.
What’s Google up to?
As far as I am aware Google doesn’t provide any equivalent feature but it has some revamped search features to enrich your user experience e.g. like if you provide a flight number it will display it schedule and whether the next flight is on time or not.
Bing Shopping
Bing also brings improved shopping experience at your fingertips e.g. A search for Nokia will bring all Nokia Phones sorted by reviews, users ratings and expert ratings. People can also sort the results based on their prices and can see the prices, availability across various sites from the Bing search page itself. You can also get special offers like Bing cashback going though the bing search page.
What’s Google up to?
Google has no presence in this niche, and Bing seems to take away the spotlight.
Bing Video Search
Bing has introduced a fresh concept in video search which really got me excited. Try searching for “IPL” on Bing and it will show you various videos on the search page and you can just start them by pointing the mouse over them! And you can see the videos from the search page itself! Might become too chaotic at times, but a nice little feature!
Now, this news has started some spicy controversies regarding ”copyright infringement” as Bing may also show copyrighted video on their search page, which they might not have rights over. Secondly, since Bing is a search engine it may not be blocked in universities, homes etc. and users can easily use it to see illegal content like porn which would otherwise be blocked.
Bing Maps
One more innovative features in Bing’s arsenal is Bing Maps where people can enter their source and destination and can also get a detailed map of the same. Even for countries like India where all the features are not available, Bing Map seems to be working great.
Microsoft is trying hard to get back the lost market share from Google in search and Bing is going to see some tough roads ahead as it tried to shoulder the huge responsibility of getting back at Google. Microsoft is not changing the rules of the search game here, but merely positioning itself at a better place. Finding a niche for itself.
After all, B.I.N.G. Is Not Google!
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I understand you are young WATTITUDE gen…unfortunately…this entry was no where near to the mark. You may want to NOT write if you don’t have good content / critique to share.
Hey sachin.. Thanks for the feedback.. Shall keep that in mind and get our bloggers to buck up.. You can be rest assured about one thing though we take your feedback very seriously and will keep working hard in the future.
Thanks a lot Sachin for your comments , Will try to improve in future.
Regards
Saurabh
A lighter version of the screenshots would have made the loading time faster! My two cents.
Good review!
My comment was to encourage you…though I think it sounded a bit harsh…sorry about that…I like the way you positively reacted. Keep up the good work.
Cheers
my initial test result shows that Bing is as good as Google when displaying relevant search results. Google might be having a tough competitor with Microsofts own search engine.
I gave Bing Maps a quick go but their maps are soooo out of date compared to Google Maps. If they cant be bothered to provide up to date UK maps then I cant be bothered to use Bing! Google all the way.