Bing vs. Google - A Study

Microsoft’s hot on the heels to hype Bing at par with Google. With arrival of the much awaited Google killer nearing, things are opening up at their own pace. What’s seems clear is that the new engine might not overwhelm Google’s supremacy in search market, but its a far more competitive product than Live Search. Formerly, code named Kumo,  Bing is a new brand from Microsoft backed by a massive ad campaign. Bing is conspicuously imitating Google in all its frame upto the blue text that it used to display the search result. However, instead of plain white background Bing greets you with photographs. Clearly, Bing appears to amalgamate Web’s most efficient planning and decision tools, say Yelp for restaurants, Amazon for shopping and Expedia for travel.

The assessments of Kumo,now Bing suggests that it’s a far more sophisticated and refined search engine than Live Search. There are no freaky issues or missing links to complain about. To be more precise, except for some instances Bing was at par with Goolge for most casual results. Above all, the remarkable thing about Bing is that it has been able to narrow the gap between Goolge and Live Search. Well, that doesn’t qualify Bing to topple the reining search-giant.

There’s a range of features dropping down the table of content on the top left column. Bing offers Google-like search types including video, news, images and maps.  Going down further you can access the search history, which would be enhanced further in some interesting ways. We can hope to see an Silverlight-enhanced version of search history equipped with more utilities and making it more social. More so, sniffing at competitors Microsoft’s search results arrive in a more logical, user friendly format instead of listing them out in order of popularity.

Undoubtedly, Bing is Micosoft’s tocsin for Google. Microsoft has incorporated the Powerset technology to varying degree and generated algorithmic improvements on the back end that are still to be exposed. From the interface upgrades and changes. Most of the people are used to the Google’s UI, Bing is a visual treat with more presentable, organized and transparent interface.

Powerset Search technology

We had already reviewed the Powerset’s search technology in our blog that could make your Wikipedia searches easier. Let’s go for a brief up.

Powerset provides a semantic search platform that strives with the goal of transforming the way humans interact with computer through language. The Powerset technology improves the search by indexing the Web pages according to the meanings expressed rather than considering the literal words. With a distinction new search could be made possible

Google Vs Bing: Search Results

Search for the game Fallout 3 on Google and Bing. Where Google gives some good results, Bing came up with the menu of related searches including Walkthrough, News, and more.

If you hover over the search results, it gives a pop up of the text on a search result. It saves a lot of time you are not sure about a result that you are seeking.

With the content of search results, Bing is not always superior than Google except for some. In most of the searches Google results were more relevant and useful. Although not too superior than Google, Bing is a much sophisticated and advanced as a search engine.

If you look for the product reviews, Google’s search results are better in most cases. However, Bing also collates users and experts reviews on many products, which provides a great overview.

For the shoppers both the search engines are equally good results. Both the services have strong shopping tabs that organize results well. Google provides the seller ratings, not present in Bing.

For news Bing fairs better on most occasions, but Google features the Google results to sort out news by date. The only difference is some extra clicks.

For the video results in Google you get a vertical list of videos whereas in Bing you get a big grid that is easier to scan and a list of related videos on the left. Although the search results are same Bing scores over Google for its beautiful presentation.

Bing is strong in its domain, providing the best search for Microsoft owned airfare prediction service Farecast. Further, the search engine also includes some medical data within itself.

To get a broader idea of Bing before its launch, we can look into some of the basic queries on Bing conducted by Search Engine land. Lets take a look at the screen shots.

Google results for George Clooney

Bing results for George Clooney

Using Bing over Google

You can rubbish this, as an execubabble that seems far from reality. I assume none of you Google addicts would switch to the new search engine. This also because you have Google search integrated to the Firefox. But, you might the fluctuating minds who loves to try out new things. Might be, you do the same to discover that you are more comfortable with Bing against you searches. For this, you need to wait until next week when it’s scheduled to go live.

Bing is knocking at the door but with not enough vigor to topple the search engine giant.