Ready for Microsoft to take another shot at Google? Bing it on On says Google! Microsoft is rolling out a redesigned search site and hopes it will lure more Web surfers than their two most recent search efforts, Live Search and MSN Search.
The new search will be called “Bing. When asked why Microsoft chose “Bing,” he said, “The name is short, it’s easy to say, it works globally.”
Microsoft’s last effort, Live Search, failed to catch on partly because the software maker didn’t do much to promote it. Marketing is no guarantee of success but this time, Microsoft appears to be taking no chances. Ad Age reported Microsoft plans to spend as much as $100 million on advertising Bing.
Some of Bing’s features showed up on a Microsoft blog in March, when the new site was known as “Kumo.” The most obvious difference is a bar of links running down the left-hand side of Bing search results pages. Some searches — especially ones for celebrities or travel destinations — yield links to help narrow results into categories. For pro athletes, it might offer links for statistics and highlights. For Thailand, categories include weather and real estate.
Bing also lists related search terms on the left, not at the bottom of the page like Google does. It keeps track of recent searches and gives people a way to e-mail links from that search history or post them on Facebook.
For some types of queries, Microsoft is positioning Bing as a destination rather than a quick gateway to other sites. For airfare searches, Bing produces results from Farecast, a travel-comparison startup Microsoft acquired last year. Microsoft is still working out some bugs, so for now users have to know a few tricks for it to work consistently. A search using airport codes, such as “SEA to SAN,” brings up ticket prices and links to see more, but “Seattle to San Diego” turns up news stories about the cities.
What I want to see is simple ways to search for TV listings! Google as far as I know doesn’t…
Come on Bing! Give us something worth switching! I am sure it will be decent, but will Bing be enough to switch users? I doubt it, but have my hopes.
Bing is it really The Decision Engine?
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The name is fine with me. What is important are the results. It looks like they’ve taken search in a different direction. From what I’ve seen they offer a little too much information. It makes it so you don’t even have to go to the site. That could be great for some users.
Oh well, I wait till June 3rd before I give my final judgment.
Another new release from Microsoft, I hope this time they will manage to keep the hype they are creating
The intent seems to be good from Microsoft in the form of ‘Bing’, lets wait and watch how’s thei execution.
Good piece of info Jake!. Keep it up
Good post on Bing.com I’ve been on the fence about whether or not I like this new way of searching or not. I agree with one of your readers that there tends to be too much information so much so that you decide not to keep going. I guess we will have to wait and see how it works for everyone or if any of the bugs get straightened out. Thanks for the extra tips that you lent to us regarding how to use Bing.com some of which I didn’t know about. JJ