Microsoft Bing – search and decision engine
This week has been excellent for social media enthusiasts. The second big news in of the week is the pre-launch of 
Microsoft Bing, its redefined version of search. The search engine will be launch officially on June 3rd. I have been using it for a week and as heavily as i use Google search and I must say Bing is refreshing and it really takes a step further in terms of competitive search market. I really liked the way they have positioned Bing as a decision engine and not as a search engine. Microsoft has positioned Bing as an engine that will help its users take a well informed decision once the search has been made. The sneak preview suggests that Bing delivers the decision making experience.
I especially liked the way in which Bing is designed in terms of its layout, site architecture and structure. Microsoft has been trying hard to offer an integrated option for msn search, msn portal and Windows life (profiling / social networking) and it can be said that they have been fairly successful to a certain extent. Via Bing, Microsoft has made it clear that they are going to fight the search battle head on and have its share of the pie too.
Bing adopts a new approach by enhancing the user experience level via intuitive tools. Initially that will help users making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business (Source: Microsoft website)
Important features:
- Guided Search: The most important thing is guided search, most users are good at first level search and while refining search they are lost for words or techniques or just of appropriate keyword. Bing really scores in this area. The best match features is also very useful in avoiding smart SEO players with poor content.
- Image search: The image search and display is excellent and especially when it shows just like windows explorer is the icing on the cake. Images can be sorted by Size, Layout, Colour, Style and People.
- Video Search: video search results are very well structured and just by hovering on a particular video it starts playing right in the search so you can preview and move on. Same way video search can be further refined by Length, Screen Size, Resolution and Source.
- News and Maps: heaps better as compared to Windows Live search.
- xRank: Microsoft has developed their own ranking system. xRank will show a detailed report on why that particular keyword has been ranked high or low. The ranking largely depend on the links that are being viewed the most for that particular keyword/key phrase.
I would say it’s very nice to have another option to search besides Google. Services like these will push each and every player in the search space and eventually users like us will derive huge benefits. As stated by Steve Ballmer “There is no way to change the whole game in one step.” But search “deserves a good feature war.” And Bing will be rolling out new features as it goes forward.
If bing is able to really guide users to make better decision and there by save a lot of search time and improve accuracy then it will surely put pressure on Google.
Download the complete Microsoft Bing feature list here
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i think that Bing is not as good as Google. Google would still index new websites faster than Bing. Microsoft would still need a lot of catching to do with GoogleBot.