Find things faster with Bing

jjones | Guides | 27/10/2009 10:36am
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We often take the humble search engine for granted, but the truth is that search technology hasn’t changed much over the last 10 years, and what’s more, it’s still far from intuitive. That’s why Microsoft has launched a new search engine called ‘Bing’, which has replaced the existing Windows Live search, and aims to take on Google and revamp the way we search, with improved results and a service which makes it easier to find the information you’re looking for.

Searching the web is something we do without thinking but the truth is that many of our searches don’t bring up what we’re looking for. When faced with the empty white search box some queries might be simple while some will be more complex. Searching “Windows Magazine”, for example, will bring up our excellent website without any difficulty, but more complex ones like “cheap flights to Sardinia” or “Sony VAIO TP3” can bring up endless irrelevant results.

It’s this decision-making process which Bing aims to change, and it’s packed with tools that help you find what you need faster and promote trusted information. Microsoft has described Bing as a ‘decision search engine’, and it has implemented tonnes of new features from the original Live Search, as Steve Ballmer – CEO of Microsoft – explained at the launch of Bing:

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find. When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the web.”

Bing is currently in its beta stage, and different regions don’t necessarily have the same functions. At the moment the UK version is operating with a depleted set of functions and will spend longer in beta than the US. The Sentiment Extraction (user-generated reviews from round the web), Rate Key for hotels and Price Predictor for airfares are not yet being released for UK searchers. However, with millions being spent on UK development, and Ashley Highfield, the brains behind the BBC iPlayer, in command, the future is bright for Bing UK.

Paul Stoddart, UK Search Lead at Microsoft, says: “Bing is being built in the UK over the next six to twelve months based on consumer insights.” Apparently, the “full proposition” will be developed using market specific requirements at Microsoft’s newly launched Search Technology Centre in London.

“The US product is […] more evolved and we are making it clear that UK Bing will launch in beta,” said Stoddart. “But we have engineers committed to making the UK product fantastic and perfect for the market. Obviously between the US and the UK markets not everything is applicable. “We have 60 engineers in Soho concentrating on making Bing the best search engine for the British market.”

Find things faster

A quick tour of the new features in Bing

Perfect pictures and viral videos

A key feature of Bing’s image search is endless scrolling of results, so you don’t need to click through tens of pages. The video search now offers live previews which enable you to get highlights of the clip just by hovering your mouse over the preview thumbnail.

Get the best deals

Bing has a service dedicated to finding products online. Microsoft recently purchased price comparison site Ciao! and this powers the UK arm of the shopping service, meaning you can get a range of prices and tap into a wealth of user reviews and opinions before you part with any cash.

Try before you click

One of the biggest new features brought into Bing, the site preview lets you sample the text of the search result from a pop out window in the results pane. This means you don’t have to waste time browsing to a page which turns out to be irrelevant. It’s easy to get a preview of the page by hovering your mouse pointer over the expandable bar to the right of your result. The bar is invisible when viewing the page normally, but if you move your mouse over the white space you’ll see it appear and the text from the site will appear until you move the mouse away.

Stay one step ahead

Often when looking for information, you will fi nd yourself searching a site hunting for another link. A prime example is when looking for contact details or telephone numbers which are linked from the home page. Using the quick preview function, Bing finds links situated on the home page and presents them, saving you the hassle of scouring the page.

Get answers instantly

The instant answers facility is a feature carried over from the Live Search service. Some queries are designed to fetch the information automatically and display it in the results, thus saving you clicks and time. Prime examples of instant answers are share prices, weather, flight status, maths problems, conversions and news.

Harness the power of the web

The US service has some features which haven’t rolled out to the UK version of Bing yet, and the best of these is Sentiment Extraction. This means that Bing will scour the web for user-generated reviews of whatever you’re searching for and bring a selection into one place, so you can instantly gauge opinions on the products you’re looking to purchase.

Search smarter

Often we don’t actually search for what we’re looking for, so when looking for reviews of a camera we simply search “Nikon D60” instead of “Reviews of Nikon D60”. This is where Bing helps you out. There’s a related searches box which suggests common queries which may be the same as yours, and could help you to find the information you need faster.

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