Bing A Hit | The Coffeehouse

raymond

Just tried Bing video and picture features.

Bing is a hit with me.

Typed in Impressionists and the videos I was looking for were on the first page.

Also, was looking for a specific photo for a blog post and got it!

Great execution.

Congratulations Bing Team!

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

I wanted to know the origin of the phrase "Bathe her and bring her to me". Bing had no clue. The answer was in the text of the first search result on Google.

I wanted to know the flight status of United 573. While both Bing and Google show this as the top result, Mobile Bing (m.bing.com) had no clue and returned a link the the United 573 union home page instead (at least I thought it did. Now it points to the United Way of Missouri).

Those examples and a number of others lead me back to Google as my default search engine. Some of the filtering features of Bing are nice ( I too like the video and image search), and I'll still keep it as a search provider for certain situations, but as soon as you step out of one of the narrow categories Bing has optimized for, you end up with the same substandard search results as Live Search.

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

In reply to DCMonkey

#Jun 5th @ 4:13 PM

I'm having a similar experience. The other day I was wondering what to do with a beetle in The Last Express, an old adventure game. Searching for "Last Express beetle" gave me nothing on Bing, whereas Google came up with a walkthrough as the first result. As long as I keep Bing the default search provider in IE, my browsing experience will be hampered by this, whereas I'd be doing fine if I just set the default back to Google.

The whole new way to present results is great and all (if you're looking for US-based stuff, anyway), and is no doubt useful if you're shopping for flight tickets or looking for hardware reviews, but as long as Bing keeps making me jump through hoops for these day to day searches, I have no idea why I shouldn't just primarily use Google since it immediately gives me what I want.

I think that's still a huge problem for any search engine other than Google. I've heard people say that Bing's search results are far better than Live's, and while that's undoubtedly true, they're not as good as Google's. And my guess is that with search engine, it doesn't matter how much your results have improved, the only thing that matters is wether yours are the best. There's no second-best in search engines; there's the best, and all the others. And only the best will win. Which means Google.

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

The quality of the search results Google gives are just better. Also none of the new local search stuff works here, and if it isn't on MSN it doesn't exist which is kind of limiting. Google's spellcheck is also much better. While Bing just assumes that any misspell that returns results must be spelt correctly.

I wish Bing offered a cut down search page without the full screen graphics and custom search button. Just like Google.com without the massive amount of JavaScript that Google.com now has embedded (Google: There is a reason people dislike iGoogle, it is too SLOW).

Bing might have been really kick butt if the categories had worked for everything and anything. Hopefully Google steals the design and implements it in a much more dynamic way that doesn't depend on a single source of information for the fields.

PS - Google's Spell Check is actually one of the best features. It is MUCH better than Microsoft Office or any other third party Spell Checker I've tried.

Sabot
My name is Dave Oliver. I'm a Technical Architect.

In reply to Bas

#Jun 6th @ 1:45 AM

I have to say that many of my experiences this week have honestly been in Bings favour.

For example I wanted to know about SQL Server installation best practices. Google came up with some good stuff but Bing took me straight to a util on CodePlex called FineBuild which is a util I'm very impressed with! So thanks Bing for helping me find this.

As for for other searches I haven't really spotted that many differences on side by side comparisons but the preview feature is keeping me using Bing as it does save that extra click.

A small thing I've noticed is that Googles result page does look dated, I thought this when I was using Ask.com that also has a nice results page.

One thing I don't like about Bing is that it defaults to using Multimap in the UK, I do prefer the old Live Maps which you can still get at but you have use the URL http://www.bing.com/maps/?cc=uk

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

In reply to Sabot

#Jun 6th @ 2:20 AM

Agreed. The new Live Maps page is horrible, junk all over the place, and a "useful information" box that is freaking out to the side.

Also I am presented with a page that looks like this each time I visit:

Check out this alternative design I just created which is, in my opinion, much more user friendly:

blowdart
Peek-a-boo

In reply to ManipUni

#Jun 6th @ 2:14 AM

Of course the google quality is better. Look who started the thread. It's a troll. Again

JeremyJ
The pioneers would be appalled!

In reply to Bas

#Jun 6th @ 1:45 AM

I think the reason you not getting good results with bing is because you are not really being specific enough on what you are looking for.

If you try: What to do with the beetle in "The Last Express"

It comes up just fine. I think with bing you have to break the habit of just doing keword searches and try to phrase them in the form of a question.

Dodo
I'm your creativity creator™ :)

In reply to ManipUni

#Jun 6th @ 2:48 AM

I think that is just right. For old browsers we need a more drastic way of telling the user to use something else. If you are not annoyed by the message, you'll never pay much attention to it, not to mention, intend to fix the problem.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

In reply to ManipUni

#Jun 6th @ 2:48 AM

My main problem with Bing Maps, as it was with Live Maps, is that any version except the Japanese one doesn't understand Japanese addresses. I don't want to use the Japanese localised version, because I don't like having the whole UI in Japanese. I just want to be able to type an address in Japanese, and have it find it. It works in the English Google Maps, so why can't the English Bing Maps do that?

Neither Google nor Bing understands Japanese addresses typed in Roman characters btw. If Bing could do that I'd switch in an instant.

Also, on Google Maps I can choose between public transportation or driving when getting directions. On Bing Maps, I can only get driving directions, and what's more, unless you're using the Japanese version of Bing Maps they're useless; the line drawn doesn't match up to the roads on the map at all, and the text directions are so generic they're no use at all ("Bear RIGHT (West) onto Local road(s)"; yeah, now I know exactly where to turn right).