Is Bing the sound of Search? (Part II)

The Differentiators

Even though Bing is differentiated than Google in some ways, by Ballmer's own confession, Bing is no Google killer and Microsoft isn't positioning it that way.

The differentiators by Bing offers several new features intended to help people perform faster, better searches with less poking around on Web pages they find through the search engine.

These include:

A set of navigation and search tools called an Explore Pane which includes a feature called Web Groups. These organize search results in the pane and in the results.

Related Searches and Quick Tabs features that provide a sort of table of contents for search results.

Best Match highlights the engine's top pick and Deep Links shows off more of the resources on a Web site in the results.

Quick Preview offers a preview of search results during a mouseover so people can decide if they want to leave the search page and click on a link.

On the surface, Bing has a distinct gloss. The home page features a rotation of stunning photography, for instance, which can be clicked on to produce related image search results. But the most significant changes are under the covers. “We have taken the algorithmic programming up an order of magnitude,” says Microsoft senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi. Each search result page is customized according to what type of search you do (health, travel, shopping, news, sports). The algorithms determine not only the order of results on the page, but the layout of the page itself, concluding what sections appear. These sections can include anything from guided refinements and a list of related searches in the left-hand pane to images, videos, and local results.

"I’ve been playing around with a preview version of Bing for about a week. It is designed to be “more of a decision engine,” says Mehdi. Bing helps people make decisions through guided search and a focus on task completion. In a time when a new Website is created every 4.5 seconds, information overload is becoming a real problem. ” People are getting hundreds of thousands of links but not getting what they want,” says Mehdi. Bing tries to alleviate problem by offering up different experiences depending on the search. It also acts more like a destination site for certain searches. Travel and product searches bring in comparison pricing, reviews, images, and more. Hulu videos can be played within the video search results. Bing pulls in data from other Web services when it can so that you often don’t have to leave to get the information you want.

Refer for all blow by blow details: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/bing-microsoft-prepares-for-war-with-a-revamped-search-engine-screenshots/

Bing features a full-screen picture on its home page that will be updated daily - rather like Google's regular logo changes.

Bing also lists related search terms on the left, not at the bottom of the page like Google does.

Once results have been displayed, a column on the left hand side suggests further related searches.

Bing also keeps a record of recent searches even if the user isn't signed in to a Windows Live account, and allows people to e-mail links from that search history or post them on Facebook.

For some types of queries, Microsoft is positioning Bing as a destination rather than a quick gateway to other sites.

Shopping with Bing, for example, is a bit like shopping on Amazon, with ways to narrow results by price, brand and the availability of free shipping, without leaving the search page.

Head to head comparison of results: http://searchengineland.com/microsofts-bing-vs-google-head-to-head-search-results-20006