Reason I Haven’t Written Off Bing

With a ten year in the making deal finally comping to a close, it seems that Yahoo and Microsoft searching will merge. This pretty much means that whenever you Yahoo, you’re reallying just going Bing. Most people in my professional circles (the web development circle) thinks that Microsoft is wasting their money and Bing is an inferior product and isn’t going to last. Well, that may be so, but I haven’t written off Bing yet. On the contrary, I’ve found some it’s features very useful and (for lack of a better term) “refreshing”. Here’s my top 5 why.

5: More (Relative) Information On The Search Results Page
Google achieved success by the complete opposite of this point. They keep things simple and condensed. This is great for most searches, but sometimes it can be frustration clicking into half a dozen links, based on a snippet of information, only to find that the specific information I’m looking for isn’t in any of them. Bing gives me more information, better screen shots, and much better image searching right out of the box. Sometimes you just need more information.

4: Fewer Paid Search Results
I have nothing but love for Google, but these days it seems that I have to scroll down half a page to get to the “real” search results. Granted, this will most likely change with Bing once it find it’s footing and breaks into the paid ad market, and you know it’s coming, but for the timing being I’m going to take advantage of the “pure” search results.

3: Media Intense Previews And Links
This point would be a con for some slower computers or internet connections, but I love the fact that I can stream multimedia directly from the search results. When you do intense music and video searches, it can be a time saver.

2: Higher Quality Search Results
This is another area where I’m sure Bing is just enjoying a honeymoon period, but searching for certain things on Google can lead you to a search results minefield filled spammers and malicious websites. Bing does not seem to have this problem…yet.

1: Ever Present Search History
Why, oh why did it take someone so long to think of this feature? When researching I am constantly finding myself search the same terms, or variations of the same terms over and over again. Having my latest searched camped out the the left side of the page is an extra step in keep my thought process strait, as well as quickly referencing a link that I found but may have accidentally closed.