If you haven’t heard, Microsoft has released their own search engine in an effort to compete with Google in the search engine market. Originally the search engine that was going to be called “Kumo” has been released and the name is “Bing.”
Microsoft is off to a pretty good start according to the marketing research company that provides marketing data and services to many of the Internet’s largest businesses,comScore Inc. Microsoft has improved their search market share by 1.7 points to 15.5% in the week following the release of Bing.
So what is causing all these improvements, and catching the eyes of the public? What does Bing have to offer that Google hasn’t already thought of? Here are a few of the features Bing has integrated into the search engine. Interface features, multimedia features, instant answers, product search, webmaster services, mobile services, toolbars, gadgets, advertising, and many more.
So let’s talk about some of these features and what they mean to us – the end user.
The interface feature is one of my favorites, probably because it’s so appealing to the eye, and got my attention right from the very first visit to Bing. The background image changes each and every day, taking you to the most remarkable places in the world, with vivid colors, and great angles.
You can even view the information about the subject of the image by hovering over the image.
Video previewing has never been so cool. By hovering over a video thumbnail, the video actually will automatically start playing, and give you a taste of what the site offers, before you actually click on the result.
The image search is very impressive as well, allowing image searching with continuous scrolling images, with adjustable settings for size, layout, color, and style.
In addition to its tool(s) for searching WebPages, Bing also provides search offerings for health, images, local, maps, news, shopping, translator, travel, videos, and xRank. Most of those are pretty self explanatory, but what about xRank?
XRank is a feature that actually allows users to search for celebrities, musicians, politicians, and bloggers. You can read short biographies and news about them, and track their own personal trends and/or popularity rankings.
All in all, it sounds like a pretty good engine Microsoft has put together, but will it be enough to compete with the market dominator Google?
Google is the king of search, of course, but the problem with Google’s results is that they’re based soley on mathematical calcualtions, whereas Bing employs some artificial intelligence. Only time will tell. In the meantime, go check Bing out first hand via http://www.bing.com/ and decide for yourself.