
Introducing The New Bing: Spend Less Time Searching, More Time Doing  - lawdawg
http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2012/05/10/spend-less-time-searching-more-time-doing-introducing-the-new-bing.aspx
======
wrath
It's interesting how we individuals on HN seem to use search in a totally
different way then other, non-technical, groups and we think we're the norm.
In the past I had the same type of comments (e.g. Google returns better
results, I don't care about social when searching, etc) but then I've taken a
closer look at how my wife and my kids use search. Totally different then me.
For me, search is my closest friend on the internet, it is my lifeline to
solving all my (technical) problems. I use Google to be productive on a daily
basis. It's not necessarily about research for me, it's about problem solving.

For the rest of my family, they use search in a different way. They search for
their favorite tv shows, for research (e.g. for trips, homework, the next big
toy for xmas), for recipes, shopping, etc. They don't search to be more
productive, they search for their hobbies and interests. As such, many of what
they search for are social by nature. My wife likes to talk with her friends
about the latest pair of shoes she's thinking of buying and my kids love to
spend hours on facebook discussing the latest episode of CSI, etc.

I'm with most of you, I don't get why we need this social "thing" on "our'
search engines. It clutters everything and I don't want others to know what
I'm searching for. But for my family, they talk about the stuff they search
for and having these features on Bing might make them switch.. maybe...

------
bretthopper
Most interesting part to me:

"To track our progress, we conducted tests that removed any trace of Google
and Bing branding. When we did this study in January of last year 34% people
preferred Bing, while 38% preferred Google. The same unbranded study now shows
that Bing Search results now have a much wider lead over Google’s. When shown
unbranded search results 43% prefer Bing results while only 28% prefer Google
results."

~~~
Androsynth
I switched over to Duck Duck Go, which uses the Bing API, with every intention
of using them full time and not going back to google. But the results were
much, much worse and I had to go back to google.

That wasn't just a blind taste test, I was actively rooting for pepsi but I
just couldn't stomach the taste and had to go back to Coca-Cola.

~~~
27182818284
Switched to DDG as well, noticed that it was a little too slow for my liking
at times, and often did produce less desirable results than Google,

but after a couple of months those dried up. It seemed to speed up a little
(don't know if it actually did) and the results seemed to get better (don't
know if they actually did or I just kicked the subconscious habit)

~~~
eighthNote
I still find the ddg results are lacking about half the time. Fortunately, its
only two characters more to redirect the search if ddg came up empty handed.

------
madoublet
I personally feel like search has been broken for a long time. I rarely use
Google outside of "site:" searches b/c the results are so bad. For example,
last night I flooded my lawn mower engine. I did a search on Google and Bing
for "how to fix a flooded lawn mower engine". The first page on both sites
were stuffed with results from ehow, ask, answers, etc. I could not find a
single good result. I finally gave up a few pages in. I am sure there are good
answers out there, but I am convinced that Google and Bing can no longer find
them. Both companies should be embarrassed that they have let these cheap
content companies game them to the point where search is no longer relevant.
Maybe Bing will fix this and my faith will be renewed, but I am not too
optimistic.

~~~
jonnycoder
I completely agree with you. Outside of doing software/programming relating
searches, Google's results are all overridden with, and you phrased it
perfectly, cheap content sites. Most of the time, if I'm doing a search like
"best turkey call", I tend to do a search such as "jesse hunting forums best
turkey call". I would not call eHow, Yahoo Answers and other cheap content
sites SPAM, but they are far from reliable than places where you can get
extremely relevant information such as hunting forums regarding hunting, or
health and workout information from forum.bodybuilding.com.

~~~
madoublet
Yeah, that is about how I operate. But, when I am out of my comfort zone (like
lawn mower repair), I am completely lost. It seems like search engines should
know where people get the best results and serve those up first. And, in my
opinion, it is rare that the best results come from these content sites. Heck,
when I search that same query today, out of the first five results, only 1 has
a picture of a lawnmower that is not in an ad. And, it is a stock photo.

~~~
rakkhi
Have you tried using the Google option to block results from these sites?
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef)

Assume you have adblock running as well? Maybe I'm the anomaly but Google
still seems very good to me for these types of queries.

Top results for me on "how to fix a lawn mower": Youtube Wiki Number of other
forums that seem relavant

------
amolsarva
I have been using Bing primarily (Chrome search box and iPhone search) for 6
months, after about 12 years with Google.

It's completely adequate/same for web searches of all types where the answer
is a web page. \- Perhaps a bit less cluttered. \- The social thumbs-up is
kind of nice.

Once long ago only Google got the basic search types right while all others
were noise machines, then Google was still better at having more pages, more
PDFs, more types of data, and now it's basically parity. All search engines
seem bad at: \- fighting "how to" seo spam \- travel/product seo spam

Not sure it's a crisis though.

Other search types: \- Images is better \- Maps is worse, and \- Local is
worse. For those I go over to Google a few times per day.

------
latchkey
Months ago, I submitted my sitemap.xml to Bing. I check the webmaster tools
all the time. No errors, it sees all the links in the file and reports the
correct number, but it refuses to index my pages. I do a search for my site in
Bing and it shows me next to a bogus social network site of a similar name.
All the while, Google is continually slurping up my content and showing my
site correctly in search results. I appreciate the promise of Bing, but I
think the implementation still has a lot of work to do.

~~~
merryandrew
I did the same and feel the same. Even DuckDuckGo does better than Bing when
it comes to indexing my site.

------
nostromo
I don't hate all social integration like some on HN, but with both Google and
Bing it really just seems superfluous, and it's really cluttering the UI.

Instead of asking, "how can we add social to our product" they should be
asking, "how can we make our product more useful." They're clearly trying to
solve a business object and not a user need.

~~~
VikingCoder
They are asking "how can we make our product more useful."

I think it's disingenuous to presume anything else.

Just because you personally don't think you need this, doesn't mean the
companies involved aren't trying to solve what they perceive to be some users'
needs.

------
alainbryden
I've been mad at Google every since they took away easy access to cached
pages.

~~~
hristov
Is it that hard to hover the mouse over a result and then click cached?

~~~
AznHisoka
yes, especially if you view the cached version 50% of the time.

~~~
daave
I'm curious, why do you view the cached version 50% of the time?

------
snprbob86
No, Microsoft, I will not give you my email address to try out your new search
service. You still refuse to respect my email preferences for several other
services. Your new design seems like a neat idea. If it was halfway decent,
I'd have sent other people to go try it, but instead, I'll ignore you like
usual.

------
Praveens
All the best to microsoft. Its better to die trying than giving up and
complaining. It will be interesting to see how social data will affect the
search results. Having been trained to use google for every search i make,
going back to an unimpressive UI which may or may not have the best search
results is in itself a very annoying thing about bing. However the problem
they are trying to solve, if achieved then i would be one of the several
millions who will be benefitted. Hence i wish them good luck.

------
nizm
"Unbranded" is not the correct term to describe stripping out ads and search
suggestions.

Visually it is still uncomfortable to use Bing; specifically for anyone that
respects typography and design.
[http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/the_best...](http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/the_best_and_worst_identities_of_2009.php)

------
zeteo
There are big risks involved in this UI that may well outweigh the benefits.
What if you accidentally "ask a friend" on searches you didn't mean to? (It's
very easy to mis-click, especially on a trackpad or touchscreen.) And what
about the person Bing/FB suggest to all their friends as an expert on, say,
"toilet paper"?

~~~
lomegor
I haven't seen the UI, but I don't think that it would be wise if you could
"accidentally" share something. There must be at least two or three buttons
before you share something.

------
lomegor
It looks nice, but I would like to know where does Bing gets the data from
Twitter and Facebook. Either Google is lying when they launched SPYW and the
data can be obtained publicly and easily, or Bing made deals with these two
companies that Google didn't for some reason.

~~~
tonfa
According to:

[http://searchengineland.com/the-new-bing-microsoft-tries-
aga...](http://searchengineland.com/the-new-bing-microsoft-tries-again-with-
search-meets-social-120728)

Bing has a deal with facebook and twitter to access the data.

> However, Google still has an argument that it cannot get all the same data
> on the open web as Bing. Twitter actually closed itself off to Google last
> year, blocking Google from even getting open web data. Even if Google renews
> a deal with Twitter, it’s now gunshy about building features around
> something that might disappear. Meanwhile, Facebook doesn’t seem to allow
> public posts out to the open web.

> Bing doesn’t have these issues, with a deal in place with Twitter and
> Facebook and no apparent blocking by Google.

------
drivebyacct2
Let me know when you figure out how to do an advanced search?

edit: goodness would you imbeciles stop downvoting. This got downvoted the
last time I asked it because people thought I was being sarcastic. It's
IMPOSSIBLE to do a refined or advanced search. Calm down with the hate for
Google's "horribly cluttered search interface" and tell me why this is OK or
why I apparently can't see what you all see.

~~~
el_presidente
First search for something, then click on advanced. Bing's designers have
obviously spent too much time playing Braid.

~~~
drivebyacct2
I'm really not trying to be an ass, but if I go to "bing.com", type "test",
press "enter". I don't see "advanced" anywhere. The closest I see is a 'gear'
that takes me to a completely different page that is not an advanced search.

Like, I ctrl+f'd to make sure I'm not just blind.

~~~
el_presidente
Maybe the Canadian version is different, because I get:

    
    
      All Results 1-10 of 38,600,000 results·Advanced
    

right under the web/images/more line.

~~~
batiudrami
You have the international version (like I do in Australia). The new design
doesn't seem to have an advanced link anywhere (you can try it by going to
preferences, and choosing 'Change country/region'.

------
loverobots
Not sure if this will make it better or not but I think Bing is willing to try
lots of things to say to people, "We're here too." If the test results were
done fairly (I have no reason to doubt them) it must be frustrating for Bing
engineers, their work is not being recognized.

Personally I do not like Google's "Ads are just more answers" attitude, it
opens the way for perverse incentives. Ads are ads, so I hope Bing, DDG,
Blekko and others take a bite

~~~
Teapot
"Ads are just more answers"

I think ads and social should compete equally with other content in Results.
In that, most ads should rank just above the spam at the bottom. And Social
results should rank as any opinions, like forums and such.

Where's the money in that? Dont know, but users would flock.

------
Sicp
umm..the bing.com/new page doesn't exist..

