Giving Up Google For Bing, Day Three: Challenging Bing’s Brain

A search engine is designed to do one thing: spit out an answer to a query typed into it. It’s a really basic concept, but the success of a good search engine rests in its versatility. Microsoft has hyped Bing as being able to do everything from tracking shipped packages to solving mathematical equations, so I knew my next adventure would be to challenge that claim. I decided to start simple. I keyed in “What is the capital of California” into Bing, and it returned “Sacramento” from Encarta.com.  The answer was accurate, but what I didn’t dig was the appearance of the result; it blended in so well with the rest of the search results that my eye initially shot past it as it sort of resembled an Adsense block. A highlight of some sort would help immensely in making the answer pop. It Next up, I decided to look up the definition of the word “laptop” by typing the “define” (in quotes) followed by the subject. The result, also culled from Encarta.com, was just an excerpt; I had to click through the link to view the full meaning. I don’t think of myself as lazy, but that’s one extra step than what Google requires (it showcases a list of full definitions pulled from various sites). I’m on a computer all day, so anything that can save this worn wrist from performing less actions gets the thumbs up. By visiting Bing.com/xrank you can check out the trending names broken down into four categories: Celebrities, Politicians, Musicians, and Bloggers . Hunky consumer tech journalists isn’t a section, but I’ll give Bing a pass. Clicking on “Perez Hilton” brought up related news items associated with the controversial blogger, as well as an bio excerpt pulled from Wikipedia, and a number of images. When conducting Bing Xrank searches, it’s best to use full names. “Arnold Schwarzenegger” returned lots of information, but “Schwarzenegger” returned less. It would be nice if typing “Xrank” and “Celebrity Name” into the standard Bing search box brought you directly to that person’s Xrank page; as it stands now, it returns a search result link to that page. A tighter integration would be much appreciated. Bing also tracks packages. When I keyed in “Fed Ex” and the tracking number into the search box, and followed it with  a quick press of the Enter key, Bing spat out a link that took me to Fed Ex’ tracking page. Frequent flyers will appreciate Bing’s fare search. When I inputted “Flights from NYC to Las Vegas” (with quotes),  Bing returned a short list of links that provided information on ticket prices and a prediction on how the price will hold over the course of the next 30 days (unfortunately, the trend was toward rising fares). This was undoubtedly the best feature I’ve some across in my newly Bingified life. Next up? Word has it that Bing Shopping is a pretty righteous tool for packing purchases. I’ll explore that in the next entry.