I have been making a conscious decision to use Bing as my default search for about 2 weeks now. We made a Bing video at this year’s SMX Advanced (where Bing was almost as buzzy as no-follow) so I was interested in the changes and wanted to take some time to see how Bing performed in the ‘real world’. Chris Crum has an article about some of the SEO implications of Bing, so I went ahead with just a side by side comparison.
There are lots of new phones coming out right now so I decided to compare Bing and Google results for queries based on a couple of the new phones. Specifically, I was looking for information on the Blackberry Tour 9360 and the MyTouch 3G. Yes, I know there is a new iPhone, and no, I don’t want one – so back to your holes Mac people.
Search results:
Both search engines provided a nice set of results in their normal index search. I really expected this to be the place where I noticed more Bing goodies, but likely due to the fact that neither of these phones is actually for sale yet, there wasn’t a lot in there that Google didn’t have in terms of decision helpers.
For example, if you search for an existing product, like a Canon digital camera, Bing gives you all kinds of handy links in the left column. Do you want to shop for one? Are you looking for reviews? Do you need a case? Accessories? – Those kinds of things are right there organized for you. It’s really pretty cool and handy once you get used to them being there.
When they are there that is.
In my query for the 2 new phones, there wasn’t anything. They are new phones though so I can excuse it. If I just type in iPhone into Bing the cools stuff returns. So all in all, I really like the decision making tools they are providing – when they are there.
Even when Bing doesn’t have decision tools in the left column for me, they do have the page preview on everything in their index results. Page preview is my new favorite thing. Just hover your mouse to the right of the result you are looking at and Bing gives you a nice snippet/preview of the page you are considering.
It may not seem like much but I have found many times, that this little added tidbit of information saves me a click then a immediate click back to the search results page to find a better alternative. Love this option. It’s going to be especially handy for weeding thru crap results you find sometimes on popular queries like ringtones and things like that.
This is an area where Bing could do even more to tell us about the site we are thinking about clicking… do they have pop ups? Are there videos? Are they a security risk? Some of the previews have an ‘Also on This Page’ section that basically has the same kind of links you’d find in a google onebox result, but I’d like to see some other info about the target page make it’s way in here.
All in all, I have to say I was really impressed with some of the cooler features in the Bing web search. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see a lot of them in my queries for the Blackberry or the MyTouch, but they are there and when they show up they can be very handy.
Image results:
Image results were not a shining moment for Bing. I wanted to find some images of the new Blackberry Tour 9360. Seemed like a reasonable enough request. Sadly, Bing fell flat on it’s face with that query, returning me exactly ZERO pictures of anything that even remotely resembled a phone. I have stared at that result page for a good long while trying to figure out what exactly they took out of my query to give me ANY of the images they gave me… I got nothing on that one.
Google did a better job here. 13 of their 21 results for Blackberry Tour 9360 were at least cell phones.
Both engines had decent results for images of the MyTouch, but Google gets the edge on that one too… Theirs were a little bit better.
News results:
Bing only gave me one result, (from E Canada Now). It was from June 19th, which was in fact newer than Google’s top result (from June 17th)… But Google did offer me links to 345 other articles about the new Blackberry. I also missed the hover preview I like so much from Bing’s regular results. Not sure why they don’t have that in their news search also, but they should.
Bing does have some interesting things in the left column (they call it the table of contents). In their news search they offer several little decision helping options, like location and category links. Unfortunately, there were no more articles or information available in the Kentucky area for the Blackberry Tour 9360. The good news is, they did provide me with a link to some news about Megan Fox being single to help me take my mind off that Blackberry Tour 9360.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have much in the way of images incorporated into their news results. The clicking of the image tab for their suggested Megan Fox query did however provided a much more rewarding result than my image search for um, whatever phone thing I had been looking for… goodness gracious. Isn’t she something? Thanks Bing.
So that was my side by side experience with Bing and Google. I was able to find adequate information in a web index search on both engines for information on the phones I was looking for. Bing makes it nice to find the best page for you on their results page without actually having to click away from the page with their page preview box. That’s really really cool.
Google won on images hands down. They gave me images of the phone. Bing gave me images of everything except phones. I still have no idea where they came up with those images. Bing has a WAYS to go with image search. Another example: I was looking for a Bing Icon to put in this article… Here’s the query on Bing
(I had to go to Google Image search to get a bing icon… That’s not cool is it?)
Bing kinda sputtered on the news query compared to Google. They did give me a fairly recent and informative news article about the Blackberry, but there was only one. The local coverage option is a nice touch, but it doesn’t help much when there isn’t anything in it.
Of course, Bing being a decision engine they did eventually help me decide that looking for news and images of a Blackberry was not as cool as looking at pictures of Megan Fox. And that, as it turns out, was a pretty good call I’d have to say. So, they do get extra credit for that one.
