Bing Ping!
Without doubt the search engine release that has generated the most excitement in the past couple of days has been that of Bing.com
Bing has actually released a bit ahead of time, unexpectedly making its premature arrival on Monday.
For a very short period both Live.com and Bing.com were running as separate entities and then Live.com started to redirect to Bing.com.
On the face of it, Bing offers lots of cool features although the interface and features differ whether you use a local version or a US version (you can set your location manually in the upper left hand corner). The US version, for example, brings up sub categories for a high level search that you might do, for example, as well as links directly to videos and images. In the South African version this just does not happen, which might make the South African user have a bit of a ‘huh?’ moment with regards to the hype surrounding the new version.
What we can see on our results that are quite cool is that a new hover window opens on the left with some summary text from the site as well as additional links that you can click to directly.
Apart from that, there are very strong indications that the actual results returned are still the same underlying results that were offered by Live.com. It does not look as if the basic underlying algorithm that brings back the search results has changed much since during the short period of time that live.com and bing.com were running in parallel one could see that the results were exactly the same.
This is actually a pity, since I am not sure that a cool and slick interface would be enough to give Google a run for its money. Flashy effects and cool graphics only go so far until you want the actual results to fit your requirements. Look how far Google managed to come with a plain white, minimalistic interface. It is not about the graphics, it is about the content. (A fact is often forgotten in web design as well….)
But given that Bing is still in Beta, there is still hope that the situation might change on the actual results set as well.
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July 12th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Microsoft wants you to like Bing. They are very keen to lure a significant enough amount of people away from Google, so it is important for Bing to deliver on user experience. For the most part the public’s response to Bing in this area has so far been relatively positive.
Bing has set up a discussion page on Facebook where fans can request features they would like to see added to Bing - http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=70424008437&topic=9495
December 1st, 2009 at 12:49 pm
hi christine,
here in our company we call bing since the coop with yahoo only bingping! after a query with google we found your posting.
best regards from hannover/germany