Bada BING, Bada Boom: Microsoft’s New Search Engine Emerges

Its about time that Microsoft Corporation offered up a new web search engine, having failed miserably in its previous attempts to do so. Blaming Google’s success for long term failures is easy to do, but when you even trail Yahoo Search badly, then there is much room for improvement.

Bing Goes Live

Whispers of a new Microsoft search engine have been heard for some time with a full scale announcement and preview offered late last week. Today is the date that Bing officially goes live, but if you’re like most of the other curious folks who have a passion for search, then you’ve already checked it out in preview. Often too.

Until now, we’ve had to endure Live Search, the most recent version of the Microsoft search engine prior to Bing. Admittedly, I use Google Search almost exclusively, heading over to Yahoo Search only when I need to check Yahoo Site Explorer out to see how my websites are performing. MSN is usually a non-thought, never getting a chance to prove itself simply because it has failed to prove itself so often in the past.

Giving Other Search Engines A Chance

Hey, don’t blame me — I gave Cuil a chance but quickly abandoned it when it turned out to be a miserable failure. On the other hand, I’ll continue to play around with Wolfram Alpha if and when I want to be entertained. Heck, Twitter Search is probably the funnest one of them all, offering up real time returns on what other people are tweeting about which sometimes can come in handy.

But, when it comes to searching for what you want to find on the internet, Google still rules, controlling about two-thirds of the market and not about to cede its place to a young upstart especially one operated by its bitter rival, Microsoft.

Relevant? Not Quite.

Naturally, when I go to a search engine I enter in my name to see how often it is returned and what sort of returns are served. By taking my full legal name in quotes — “Matthew C. Keegan” — I come up with more than one million results, at least ten times the number I typically find on Google Search. Hmmm….

Okay, I know that I am famous, but I doubt that every single one of those results is accurate. Perhaps more telling is that when I click on the Image tab associated with my name, I find three actual pictures of me with several others being of unrelated photos I’ve used on my many different sites and a handful of other pictures of various objects I’ve never seen before. I may write about car engines, but I resent being associated with a diesel engine!

Playing Around With Bing

I’m not very scientific when it comes to trying out a new search engine, rather I use many of the same tactics I employ on Google Search to give Bing a whirl. Usually, I know almost immediately if a search engine holds promise based on what it does versus what I already know what Google can do.

Bing, even with some results for certain search terms not being all that relevant, still offered up some accurate and informative results for other terms I like to use. In fact, I managed to find some Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) parallels with Google. I do like Bing’s clean interface and the preview information about each result that appears when you hover over it is certainly handy.

Not yet cluttered with a bunch of ads, the Bing “surface” is easy on the eyes, simple to navigate and doesn’t have that “thrown together” feel of Cuil. I like clicking on the Maps tab to find a location which shows how to get there from here while also revealing an aerial view, bird’s eye look and more. I will happily toss Mapquest for the chance to use Bing Maps, what may end up being an important pull to get me binging the ‘net.

Binging The ‘Net

All that said, I liked previewing Bing and plan to spend more quality time with the web’s newest search engine in the days and weeks ahead. Cuil failed out of the box, but Bing appears to have enough going for it to make a serious run as a search engine.

Will Bing challenge Google? It may, especially given Microsoft’s plan to throw $80-100 million dollars in advertising at it. Of course, Google won’t roll over without a fight which means that the winner of this battle will ultimately prove to be you, the web user.

See Also – Wolfram Alpha, The Only Search Engine You Need?

Wolfram Alpha, The Only Search Engine You Need?

Okay, I missed the long awaited release of Wolfram Alpha, the all new search engine that has been creating tons of anticipatory buzz for several months now, but not by much: it was quietly rolled out on Friday night with the official launch scheduled for today.

I first heard of the search engine this past January and immediately became intrigued by what it promised to do. However, given the previous great Cuil failure, I approached Wolfram Alpha’s release with a bit of trepidation, fearing that the hype would lead to a major disappointment. I’m happy to report that Wolfram doesn’t disappoint, in fact I think it’ll supplement Google search in the minds of many web users.

My Review, Just A Preview

Just to let you know, I have yet to spend endless hours on Wolfram so my review is from a “first look” perspective. Over an extended period of time I’ll gradually examine what Wolfram has to offer before offering up a full review, meanwhile I’m sure you’ll be reading a lot about this search engine elsewhere over the coming days.

For hardcore search engine geeks — that would be anyone who long ago embraced Google search as their default search engine of choice — the question that comes up with Wolfram is why do we need a new search engine? Well, we don’t but I’m a firm believer in competition and I also think  that there is room for improvement/refinement with all of our favorite online tools including Google search.  Google Squared was just released which, from what I’ve heard, will provide similar results as Wolfram.

Your Computational Search Engine

Wolfram approaches search differently from basic Google search in that if you enter a term you aren’t going to be served up an endless number of pages which may or may or may not have anything to do with what you’re looking for. Nor will you be subjected to endless contextual ads at least not initially.

For example, when I entered the term “New York” in the search bar, the results served up were for New York City, listing the city’s population, the population of the metropolitan area, a map of the 48 contiguous United States pinpointing New York’s location, local time, current temperature and elevation. Click on a couple links and you can see satellite imagery of the city and retrieve coordinates. And, if you really meant New York State instead of the city, one additional click can bring you information about the state.

Keep Your Queries Simple!

In short, Wolfram Alpha is a computational knowledge engine, one that serves up math based answers. So far I’ve discovered the simpler the query submitted, the better for getting spot on answers.

For example, if your question is, “How many miles from New York to Miami?”  you’ll get “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input” as your answer. However, if you make your query simple such as “distance New York Miami” you’ll get an answer. So, keep it simple and Wolfram will be able to serve up the correct answer.

If you’re looking for additional takes on Wolfram Alpha, then I suggest you start with Wolfram Alpha, Google ‘rival’, launches or Wolfram Alpha: Wikipedia Killer? for some good reads.