Bing VS Everyone: Round 1

Atypical of Microsoft's normal style Bing.com went on line with relatively little fanfare. This made me wonder if it was something that they didn't really believe in and just wanted to keep a presence in the market or were they just trying a new tactic. Either way I needed to check it out.

Balloons? Why would they put balloons on the front page? I know that it would appeal to some people especially those under the age of 6 but as I moved my mouse around I saw the information boxes pop up telling me more about the picture. The facts were short, concise and interesting. Well maybe balloons aren't as bad of an idea as I thought. I took the time to read every box and even clicked on one to find out where the picture was taken. I never would have guessed Turkey. Today were looking at windmills from the Netherlands and once again the facts are interesting. I think I'm going to enjoy the changing scenery.

So now that I've rambled on about the front page let's discuss what else is of interest. The first thing I noticed is that even with the graphics it rivals Google for speed and quality of results and is light years ahead of Yahoo. A couple of nice features that are located on the left hand side of the results are the related searches that may help you narrow your searches for even better results and the search history so you can easily redo a search.

Another feature that is very useful is having the ability to preview what the site is about before actually going to it. By moving your mouse to the right of the result a box comes up that gives you an idea of the site content and also additional links that are on the page. This should save a lot of clicking on the back button trying to find what you are looking for.

If you have ever done a generic search you are going to love the way that the search results are now categorized to make things even easier when trying to narrow down what you want. For instance if you search for shoes you get the paid search results at the top and then the regular search results. What makes it so useful is after the regular results then you the categories that has a few results under each of them but you can also expand to get a full listing of that category. It seems that the order of the categories are arranged by what most people are looking for when they search that term. This is purely speculative and more testing needs to be done but if I am correct then this becomes an even more useful feature.

I'll be honest about the fact that I have not had as much time to test and use Bing as much as I would like however I have to say by what I've seen so far I think Microsoft has definitively got it right. They have added tons of usability and time saving options without any major sacrifices of speed and quality. Since all search engines evolve I think that the future is very good for Bing.