Windows 8.1 will enjoy a Bing search engine as part of the operating system – it will search the PC, the Web, and the user’s personal cloud.
Bing “Re-Imagined” For Windows 8.1: More Beautiful, Comprehensive And Integrated, Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (May 30)
Greg Notess reported that Bing added date searching as a standard filter on the search results page. But don’t expect to find it in Canada. Of course, the Bing Canada version doesn’t have it, and neither does Bing.com when I say (notwithstanding my IP address) that my country is USA.
That whole Bing thing in Canada is too frustrating. But if you’re reading this from the US, check Greg’s posting to find out what to look for.
Bing’s Updated Date Searching, Search Engine Showdown (Mar 28, 2013)
BIng’s snapshots – those nuggets of information that show on some general searches – are becoming more like Google’s Knowledge Graphs with its display of connected entitites.
Compare these two views of Vancouver BC. They are almost identical. Google has a map, Bing has “also searched for”.
 Bing Snapshot on Vancouver |
 Google Knowledge Graph on Vancouver |
Aaron Bradley at SEO Sceptic examined both in Bing Mounts a Personal Offensive Against Google’s Knowledge Graph (March 21)
He thinks Bing is doing a better job showing people because of social information:
“With this latest update Bing is more than ever taking advantage of its social partnerships, and is in general exploiting the availability of social information for (living) people.”
Bing Snapshot on Stephen Abram
Bing, thanks to LinkedIn, can also provide snapshots on non-celebrities. Here’s one of my favourites – a celebrity in the library world – Stephen Abram. Of course, nothing at Google, because Bing is using social networking sites.
“Bing might arguably be returning more useful Snapshot results than the equivalent Knowledge Graph results because of the additional social properties (Twitter, LinkedIn, Klout) that are displayed for living celebrities in Snapshot, but not in the Knowledge Graph.”.
The semantic technologies underpining the analysis of entities and their linkages are delivering better answers – and Bing has made a great leap forward.
Microsoft has plans for Bing that go well beyond its presence as a web search engine. Strategists see it as a base for an “information platform” in a world of search that does not involve typing keywords into a search box.
The Bing operating system: Microsoft bets on deep search integration to beat Google, Tom Warren, The Verge (Mar 14)
Adam Sohn, senior director of public and influencer relations for Microsoft Corporation, describes the future of search as –:
“We believe typing in a search box is not going to be the model going forward,” says Sohn. The different usage patterns and new ways to access information, be it on phone or tablet, are forcing users to expect more from Office, Windows, and Xbox to get personal and work-related activities done. “In some ways search becomes just one application on this platform,” explains Sohn. “It really becomes one way this stuff is consumed.”
Nathan Safran sees a very social future for search engines in his article, The Search Engine We REALLY Want To See Google (Or Microsoft) Build (Search Engine Land Mar 7).
He notes that search engines haven’t changed much in the last few years except that Google added Knowledge Graph. Generally, I would say Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo have more semantic smarts – and we know there is a movement toward social. For the future, he sees (or hopes for) increased capabilities in social sentiment, social discussions, email search integration, and user interface.
He also comments on Bing’s failure to increase marketshare – mainly that there’s no compelling reason at this time to shift from Google.
I was poking around in Google Plus – found Dan Russell’s page – he’s Google’s search guru – and noticed a session about Google and Bing for Researchers delivered for the National Institutes of Health as a NIH Libraries’ seminar, on February 6, 2013.
http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?Live=12437&bhcp=1
Screenshot from webcast
Russell, research scientist at Google (on left), and Duane Forrester, senior product manager with Bing’s Webmaster Program (on right), spoke about their search engines, the work being done to improve search, and search techniques.
Forrester spoke first and spent some time explaining Bing’s work to understand a person well enough to produce better search results – and drawing on social results to add authority and refine results.
Russell starts at about 47 minutes in the video. He used search challenges from his blog (Search Research) explaining how he arrived at the answers using variety of Google resources, web resources, and search techniques. What do people need to know to be good searchers?
The first skill is to use CTRL F (Windows) or CMD F (Mac) on a page – and to make use of browser features to see the words. Surprisingly, according to Russell, 90% of searchers don’t know this.
The seminar is 2 hours long – very rich.
At Bing you can tag pages as being related to you or your friends – do this at Bing Tags – then those tagged pages show up in Facebook timelines. Barry Schwartz described it in Bing Linked Pages Now Called Bing Tags (Dec 21, 2012). Bing has said that these tags can be public – though this depends on your privacy settings. Danny Sullivan describes all the pieces involved in this tagging process –
Bing Tags Expands, Makes Pages Linked To Your Profile Public (Jan 22). You may conclude as I have that this is far too much bother and will probably flop.
Bing may be a worthy alternative to Google again. This fluctuates, and Bing in the last year or so has removed page previewing and some special displays for topics such as recipes.
However, lately I’ve been struck by relevancy of its search results: I haven’t thought – “oh surely there must be better results” and flipped back to Google. Bolding of terms in the snippets is good, although those snippets have become very short and there is no page preview.
But what happened to Advanced? It is not entirely lost but is definitely hidden and limited. To find it - run the query, look at results, click in the search box again to get more suggestions – then you see the link to Advanced Search.
Bing Canada shows choice for language and region (to quickly restrict to Canada) on all results pages.
On Bing.com web search pages, you’ll see a filter on time: past 24 hours, week or month.
The Advanced Search is an extra panel with choices for domain, country, language and terms. Note that you cannot search for words in the title of a page using this form.
Aaron Couch at MakeUseOf has identified several features at Bing.com that he finds attractive – Greater Than Google: The Best Bits Of Bing (December 20).
These features can be found at Bing.com (not Bing.ca and not likely other country versions).
Give yourself some time to explore Bing.com (the US version).