BING Logo

Out comes a new search interface/algorithm set/a real new search engine from Microsoft. Slated in as the “next big thing in search” may be just after Wolfram Alpha, searchers are getting a new option to search on. Will it be exciting? Will it satisfy users’ queries in a better manner? Let’s have a look whether Bing is a bang or just its alternate meaning – a heap of pile.

In a hasty move, Microsoft launched its official search engine christened as BING. Although the company announced that the new search engine will be made available by June 3, the full-fledged unexpected release of the beta version of the search portal has left industry analysts amazed. The question on everyone’s mind is – why Microsoft launched Bing two days prior to the officially announced release date? But there aren’t any answers.

Whatever the reasons are, the fact is that Bing is here to make a bang and challenge the supremacy of the search giant i.e. Google. Moreover, in the near future it is going to replace Live which is at present the main search engine of Microsoft. Additionally, those who are contemplating Bing to be a Google killer kindly reset their expectations. Microsoft too has stated that it’s a fresh (re)start for them in the search domain and the improvements will continue to be rolled out. It looks like they are in no mood to dethrone Google, at least not right now. As far as the name is concerned, Bing is definitely a better name than “Live Search” as we all know that whatever results search engines display are not live but an assortment of their huge database.

Let’s have a close look at Bing and see what it looks like. If we talk about the user interface of Bing, it is quite clean with a picturesque background which unfortunately offers certain level of distraction to the user and many online analysts won’t approve to it.

Bing Home Page

The Search Engine Result Page (SERP) offers much better and clean interface as compared to the default page of Bing.

BING SERP

What you search for determines what you see on the left hand side. Suppose you search for Microsoft, the extreme left hand side of the page displays snippet of related searches much like as shown on Google at the bottom of the page.

BING SERP

The most significant change in the display of results is that Bing organizes search results in categories. Suppose you search for Obama, you can see in the screenshot below arrow pointing to the categories that are listed at the top left corner of the page.

BING Category

Here Bing tells the user what other options related to Mr. Obama can be looked into. This feature is quite similar to the one that was launched at the Google Searchology 2009 last month. At present not every search query brings up such links. At the launch, Microsoft has stated that these links at present would appear only for:

• Automobiles
• Travel & Local
• People
• Sports
• Health
• Entertainment
• Retail
• World known events

Over the time more queries will get into the categorization.

There are wide speculations about Google getting affected with the launch of Bing. But, just because a product is launched and it calls itself new & improved does not mean that people will abandon the brand they are already using. Although Bing poseses some new challenges to Google but there isn’t any compelling reason for people to switch their brand loyalty. Google is working absolutely fine and is positively evolving with the passing time. Microsoft knows this fact too. Then why they launched a new search engine? Well they have plenty of reasons to back this up. They conducted an internal research with searchers and came out with the following facts:

• 72% said that search results are too disorganized.
• 66% said that they allow search engines to make decisions.
• 50% said that the results fail to meet their needs.

These were the factors that compelled Microsoft to launch the new search engine. With this launch Microsoft aims to provide definitive results to the searcher and satiate his thirst. But I am not ready to buy it. I have never come across a person who says that Google is good for general searching but he needs another search engine if he wants to precisely search for something. In fact, Google has become a way of life. What all things Microsoft is trying to achieve via Bing Google has already done it in the latest improvements which were made public at the Google Searchology 2009.

It should be noted that Bing’s rollout on mobile devices is not complete just yet. Bing offered the following Tweet this morning:

BING on Twitter

Actually Google is like a Swiss knife that is an appropriate tool to get different tasks done. It might not be a perfect tool for a particular task, but it’s often good enough to get the task done and this is the reason why it keeps getting used.

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land makes a good point. “Some of these aren’t unique to Bing; other search engines offer them, as well. But one good part about the Bing launch is that as people explore it, they’ll rediscover things that search engines generally can do but which are often overlooked or not realized by even tech-savvy people,” he says.

Bing’s going to be getting a lot of attention in the immediate future, but the question is are people going to abandon the familiar Google search in favor of Bing use, or are they just going to play around with it, say, “hmm, that’s cool,” and then go back to the search engine they’ve been using for years. So far, Bing seems to be getting a pretty positive reaction.