Let’s face it – searching content is not easy. Google is the champ when it comes to search, but if you have faced the frustration of meaningless keyword indexed pages thrown at you, you know how hard it is to find what you really are looking for. Well, hold your horses, because all that is about to change. And “Bing” is the answer.
One look at some of the core features of Bing, and you know that it does wonders in many areas. Areas that Google should’ve long looked at, but didn’t because it was the only major player in the market. Slowly but surely, this will change. I think if the folks @ Redmond play their cards right, they may have a winner here.
Without further ado, let’s get down to 10 Reasons why you will love Bing.
1. If you love local searches, Bing just became your best buddy
I cannot begin to tell you how good the local search is. Type in “Italian Restaurants in San Diego” and you will see a list of local restaurants. Nothing great. This is similar to Google.
But wait till you click on any of the restaurants. BOOM! (No, sorry that’s not Steve Jobs demoing the IPhone). You suddenly see a neat score card and reviews on the restaurants w.o. leaving the site. Not only that, you get a map, with directions from all close-by highways.
Clicking on the map will give you directions from all the nearby highways, since who needs door-to-door directions anyways. I know how to get to the highway, so why don’t you tell me from there. Bing does it. And it does it great. I looked and looked for a very Rat-Pack style Italian restaurant with live jazz music, I started to miss those NYC nights, and lo and behold Bing gave me the restaurant I wanted. I couldn’t do that with Google. Yes, I did find the same restaurant on Yelp, but then again, now I don’t have to go to Yelp, as I can always view the reviews right on the same page.
You can now find local coffee shops, eateries etc without ever having to go to 3 different places.
2. If you love Sports/Games, Bing is Da man!
Ok, quickly, type Kobe Bryant on both Google and Bing. No really, do it.
Here’s what drab Google brings:
Nothing interesting by Google. some videos, a Wikipedia entry etc.
Compare that to what Bing brings:
On the left hand navigation you see items like highlights (which shows all his latest games first), dunks, stats etc. Then you see related searches which are really neat. But on the right hand side, you see all his stats on scores! Points on his last 3 games, Season stats etc. And not only that, but you see separate sections of results on Kobe Bryant Games, Kobe Bryant highlights, biography etc. So you can then narrow your search down to any category you want.
Try the same for the keyword “Padres” on Google and Bing. Note the difference. We’re talking an awesome user experience!
3. Compare Stock Quotes
We all have our stock tickers. Nothing special about it. But yea, Bing does do something really cool. Let’s type in “AAPL CAL GLD quote”. Lo and behold! Bing brings quotes!
Nifty!
4. Awesome Home Page
You’ve gotta give it to them. This is really the coolest stuff I’ve seen. Yes it was alive and working on Live search, but Live search was so yesterday’s search. For people like me, this is one of the most awesome things. I love to travel, and do things that are significantly different, like setting sail in Miami, or riding sled dogs in Alaska, you get the idea, and the home page opens up a completely new prospect of learning more and exploring the world in a better way. For me, this is my daily thing. What can I get from Bing home page today.
5. Hover On Page Summary
A small but cool feature, you can hover on the orange circle next to each link, and it brings you the text of that page. No need to click on the link to find out whether the page contains information you want or not. This seemingly un-interesting feature has itself really saved me a huge chunk of extra clicks i.e. click > hate the page > back button. It’s all about the small things in life. Pareto’s law to full effect.
6. Image Search
Great Image search. Period. Google…goodbye! No one can come close to image search like Bing. I searched for Eiffel Tower, but I only love pictures of Eiffel Tower, that were taken in the night. Here’s the cool thing, hover over 1 night pic (as shown in Fig 1) and then just click on “show similar images” and you’ll see results after results, all on the same page (i.e. no pagination) for the same type of images.
Not only that, you can categorize images by: size, layout, color, style and by People (where options are: Just faces, all, head and shoulders and other) and each of them work pretty good!
7. Video Search
Incase you haven’t heard, Bing is a porn lover’s paradise. Not to take credit away from the excellent feature that Bing provides, but it makes browsing porn (and other videos) really easy. You can hover over a clip and watch it all live in action without having to leave the page. If you decide you like the clip, click on it. In many cases, you still don’t have to leave the site. For someone who loves videos, this is a great place to be. You can sort videos by duration, resolution, screen size and source.
8. Shopping
Cashback works! Type in “Canon Rebel XT” and you’ll see neat little sections like – Shopping, manual, instructions, driver, case, parts, images and videos on the left hand nav. Clicking on a camera actually gives you all the information you need: Product Details, User Reviews, Expert Reviews (a must!) and Compare Prices
9. Travel
Farecaster was a great application. Now that it is integrated in Bing, it’s even better. Looking for airfare deals, trends, or hotel deals etc. Look no further. Bing does it for you. Type in “Airfare to Seattle” and you’ll see a section with prices from cities right on the search page. Click on more deals and you’ll see the other page.
We all know how Farecaster works so I won’t delve into much detail. But it does great. I know I am going to use it again and again; until I find that right deal. You can also directly check your flight status by typing in the keyword “Flight Info”
10. All those other things
Then there are the other things, A TON more if you ask me.
a) Typing in UPS can let you track your package right there
b) Typing in a Movie name will give you all show times right there. You can also see the IMDB rating right on the same page. I really don’t even have to leave the page.
c) Better Health Info, integrated with Mayo Clinic etc
d) Type in word Traffic and you get a heat map with live traffic feedback
e) Great celebrity search, rankings, etc
f) Type in “weather” and you get the weather forecast
g) It remembers your searches. You can save searches
h) Type in a car name and you’ll get all the details for e.g.: Honda Accord
i) Calculator, Instant Answers etc etc
These are all the good things Bing has to offer you. By habit, we are so used to Google (me included) that we find it hard to believe that someone out there can actually provide a better service. I started with a whole lot of hesitation, but slowly I completely phased Google out. There are only certain things that Google does very nicely, like searching for a really old book that can’t be found anywhere. Google has the answer. But for most part, I use Bing because I know I get more meaningful results and I can quickly jump on to a category of my choice.
There are some quirks with Bing though, if you type a spelling incorrectly, it does not give you what you are looking for. I am sure as time passes by this will change.
I would love Bing to integrate with real-time streams like Twitter and Fbook. I know MSFT is already venturing in this area. So that would be great.
So why am I writing this? No I don’t work for MSFT. I did not get paid by MSFT to write this. I am writing this because I am a big fan of healthy competition. Anyone, and I mean anyone who has done business with Google for their campaigns knows how hard they make it for businesses. We are at their mercy, they can raise costs when they want and by as much as they want. There is no *logic*. A healthy competition in this area will put Google back on ground.
For a business model like that of Google, even a 10% decrease in share means tremendous change in revenues.
For customers like us, this is even better, because it gives us the best of the best.
Bing is also a great product and that makes it even better. Give it a whirl, I promise you won’t regret it.
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