Is Bing better than Google Search?
This month Microsoft launched its next generation search engine. It’s another attempt from Redmond to catch up on Google and gain share of the lucrative search market. After failing miserably with MSN Search and Live Search, Microsoft decided to completely rebrand and restart their attempts. The result of this work is Bing, the decision engine, as the Softies like to call it.
Many have come trying to dethrone Google, but none of them even got near. Not only in terms of share but also in functionality. Of course, there always were - and always will be - specialists in certain niches, but as overall tool, Google de facto standard.
In theory, Google sorts it’s search result by popularity with the famous PageRank algorithm. Microsoft, in contrast, claims to sort them by relevance. Whereas popularity is more or less well defined by incoming links per page, defining relevance in terms of technical functionality isn’t clear. So we just made the test and searched for WhatsYourPlace. Astonishing at it may seems, the results were nearly identical, which may be regarded as compliment for Bing – Bing may fall short to offer a revolutionary alternative but doesn’t disqualify as a substitute.
Although both engines have quite similar results, Google still has the advantage of being more up-to-date, especially if your searching for current events in news and so forth. Talking about the result’s representation, both have their little features, which help to handle the results easier, as e.g. the tooltipps offered by Bing for every result. But in my opinion, at the end of the day, it’s the same.When it comes to video and image search, the actual results are very similar. Both support filters for searching images, which allow you to e.g. search for faces only and so on, nothing new hear. WhatsYourPlace screenshots look great in either way. If you use Bing to search for videos, you’ll find a neat feature: hovering over the video’s preview image starts playing it. This may sound merely toylike, but it does in fact accelerate your search, because you don’t have to leave the other search results.
Bing’s really strong side lies in the special searches for health, traveling and shopping. What the Softies have done, is to integrate the functionality of typical travel or shopping websites into their search engine, therefore they work with many partners to provide these informations. If you are looking for a flight from New York to LA, you’ll get price trends in that time of the year, next to the normal list of cheapest tickets. Nothing new, but in one place. On the other hand, that’s not (yet) interesting for WhatsYourPlace. In future it would be interesting to see price trends for the estate markets of WYP.
Putting it together: Microsoft managed to catch up with Google in many fields, but thats not enough. People are used to Google and it’s nice that Bing offers the same results, but as long as these results aren’t better, why should you brake with your habits and change?
Other much more comprehensive Bing vs. Google comparisons:
Google Tests New “Product Ad” Format
Too Much Bling Going On With Bing
Where Can Bing Hurt The Most For Google?
When It Comes To Search Trends, Google Is Lagging Behind Bing