This new comer to the world of search engines is brought forth by one of the biggest companies in tech. Microsoft is presenting Bing as an alternative to Google that has features and capabilities that the brute force method that Google uses does not. Bing appears to be very good at finding information about tangible goods and services that a person might shop online for. While it still provides results for almost any query, Bing specializes in helping users find the best deal or to provide information about products and services provided by a vendor.
How Is Bing Superior To Google?
The key to the potential success of Bing as a search engine appears to be the incredibly useful navigation controls that are built into the results interface. Instead of having to plod through page after page of results in search of a specific answer these navigational buttons allow the search results to be narrowed down to more manageable amounts of data. Searching for a chain restaurant's name will bring up the main corporate web site or lists of dozens of individual locations, by clicking the Local tab in the search results however, the results are reconfigured to provide a listing of those restaurants that are in the local area. When available it also pulls in reviews and other information that might be of interest regarding that restaurant.
Bing Excels at Travel Related Queries
In a similar fashion, Bing takes the entire process of searching for the best deals on travel and places everything in one neatly organized space. A search for fares will pull in the prices from many different airlines, and allow a user to purchase or change criteria to find the best deal. As Wired columnist Ryan Singel points out in a recent review of Bing, the best part of the travel search is a feature which actually predicts whether the fares are expected to increase or decrease in the near future. By taking this information into account a travel buyer can potentially save hundreds by waiting a week or two to purchase the ticket.
The usability features of Bing lend itself best to places that Google falls a bit short such as collating useful online shopping results into an easily scanned page of data. While it certainly has an uphill battle against the dominant Google, Bing certainly is poised to become a significant Google alternative.
