back to article Bing zings, but for how long?

Microsoft’s Bing bubble apparently hasn’t burst yet - stats released yesterday show the firm’s revamped search engine upped its share of paid clicks by 13 per cent following its launch earlier this month. Analysis outfit Efficient Frontier spun out the data on Tuesday, but added the numbers didn’t really reveal all that much …

COMMENTS

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  1. Fractured Cell
    Megaphone

    Ok, What?

    So they have just re-invented Windows Live Search with a new UI.

    Big Whoop.

    i give it about 3 weeks before people start to realise what a crock of shi-ummm, sugar it is.

    That is, all except those who used Live before that, and Yahoo! before that. But they deserve to be burnt at the stake for being a heretic.

    The Jesus Phone has spoken! Now spread the word!

  2. Andrew Tyler 1

    I fiddled with it.

    It's okay. I guess. It's no better than Google for sure. The search page is ugly and too bandwidth heavy, but not nearly as bad as the monstrous Yahoo/Lycos search pages. The results it returns seem to be pretty much the same as Google. The video search is a lot better though. I like the preview feature, which is actually pretty impressive.

    The best I would say for it is if that Google exploded I would use Bing instead of the others.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Title

    “The coming weeks and months will tell a more complete story on the success of Bing.”

    We'll see.

  4. Jimbo 7

    google

    in very general I don't like when any company has significant portion of a market, this only hurts customers and does not drive innovations as fast

    this applies to a lot of companies out there - google with search, microsoft with windows or apple with iPod

    i tried bing and I think I almost 100% agree with Andrew Tyler. Bing has few nice details but overall it's not that great

  5. sparky66

    Bing! Not!

    I tried BING!, I wanted to like it, but it's the same old faulty search as Live Search. All I wanted was the download location for "XP SP3". BING! gave some Microsoft pages, none relevant. Google took me right there on the first result. How can they still not correctly find things on their own servers? It's been this way forever. Maybe it learns over time, but I doubt I'll check back.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Bing? Schming

    The problem with Bing is that apart from the cideo preview it doesn't actually offer anything ground breaking and that is where it all falls down: People by nature are conservative and will stick with what they know, unless the "new" is so radically different that it becomes the thing to do or have (like the early iPods or the Iphone)

    If I have a Ford and I'm happy then I'm not going to move to a Vauxhall if it offers me the same features for the same cost. I'll stick with what I know.

    If I have a phone that does what I need it to then I'm not going to just swap it for another phone from another manufacturer if it doesn't offer me new features that really make me go wow.

    And if my local pub can serve up 3 or fine real ales at a reasonable price and I enjoy the surroundings then why should I even consider walking further to another pub that offers me pretty much the same beer range.

    So maybe MS need to go back to the drawing board and come up with a real "Google Killer" rather than just Live Search in a new coat.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good for images, bit m'eh otherwise

    Is my detailed review.

  8. Rod MacLean
    FAIL

    RE: I fiddled with it

    Andrew Tyler 1 wrote: "The results it returns seem to be pretty much the same as Google"

    Really? I tried it last night and the first thing I did happened to be an image search. Practically none of the results came even close to matching the search parameters. I couldn't find what I wanted on the first 5 pages, so I switched to Google (which ofc returned exactly what I wanted in the top row of results)

    "The video search is a lot better though. I like the preview feature, which is actually pretty impressive". Yeah, it is quite good isn't it? The problem is that once again, the results I've seen were only vaguely related to my search criteria, so it's not exactly usable.

    Which makes me ask - has this thing been tested? Is it supposed to return a load of crap instead of results?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Google ideas.

    It wont be long. Until we see the video preview thing on Google.

    Then Bing will have no selling points.

  10. Jimbo 7

    to zerofool2005

    you are right, google will steal the idea and we will all be happy back in moster company who rolls everybody over...

    I wish Yahoo or ASK.com would fight a bit more

  11. Wade Burchette
    Grenade

    Ugh

    Microsoft needs to stop trying to do EVERYTING and just focus on doing a few things. Those who do everything do nothing well. And Bing/Live Search is a perfect example. Google is no saint, but until someone else actually has a search as good as Google, I will be using it. I want results, not advertising blitzes. Bing/Live couldn't find the ocean if it was standing knee deep in water. I can find what I need faster with Google and Yahoo than with Bing/Live. Why waste my time just because it can play videos?

    (Love the new icons! Suck on this!)

  12. Andrew Tyler 1
    FAIL

    More fiddling.

    Yeah, after some more fiddling today the search isn't as good. Before, I had gone through and searched for every search I remember running on Google for the last week or so: "repair double hung window" and "cat diarrhea," for instance (both of which ruined my week), and it gave me the most useful sites I found through Google, but digging a little deeper into random, computer nerd centric things produced almost entirely useless results.

    Anything that made me move away from Google would have to be substantially better, and to be honest, what I'm looking for usually pops up on the first page of Google results, so making anything substantially better would be difficult. If they could manage "as good," I'd probably be happy to use it if only to make Google sweat a little bit.

    So.. yeah, I probably should have tried to break it more. I do like them video previews though. Even if entering "double hung" into a slightly schizophrenic video search engine isn't the best idea.

  13. Anonymous Hero

    @Rod & Andrew Tyler

    This site lets you compare results side by side:

    http://www.blackdog.ie/google-bing/

  14. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    @Sparky

    Sparky, Bing sends you to the Windows XP page on their second link, with SP3 and links to much more useful info than Google gives you on just the download page. (Admittedly, the first link instead of the second.)

    For a regular consumer, Bing's results are a much better result, as long as they realize the first link goes to the Wikipedia entry for WinXP.

    IMO Bing wins your comparison.

  15. Ian 37
    Pint

    I'm sorry

    I have nothing relevant to say on this article. However, I did want to try out the new icons.

  16. sparky66
    Happy

    @Anonymous coward

    Well, apparently BING! has already been improved, or learns quickly. When I tried to use it right after it came out, "XP SP3" did not take you to anything relevant on the entire first page, let alone the second result. I would have been satisfied with the search result I just got when I repeated it today after seeing your post. I still would have preferred just the download page, but I can live with a page with links to the download. That first search was just so spectacularly bad I hadn't gone back.

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