websense

So, I’m thinking it’s about time to comment on the new Microsoft product, Bing. Microsoft touts it as being the newest thing in Search, and it is, but is it really any different from what we’re all used to? And, is there anyway it can compete with search giant, Google? Will it change anything about the way we optimize for the search engines?

The hype leading up to the release of Bing would lead you to believe that other search results were so loosely tied to keyphrases that you could get almost anything on a results page. To a certain extent this is true, and has lead to the use of and optimization for the long tail phrase. Single word searches do tend to result in just about anything.

Just as a test, I plugged the word “jeep” into both Google and Bing. The results look pretty much the same to me, at least at the top of the page. As I scrolled down, however I did notice a few differences. The Bing results seemed to know what I was asking for, and did not give me results for a rock band named “Jeep” or anything else. I also really like the image results, and the other categorized results as seen in the screen shots below. I have also included the Google results page for the sake of comparison.

So, I had to wonder if this would work this well for a less well known term, something obscure, but still just one word, so as not to bring the long tail effect into play at all. I searched the word “blind”, as it has several meanings. The Bing results were less well defined, as there was no way for Bing to determine what I really wanted. I got results from sites for the blind, as well as sites where you can buy blinds, and what I think was a site for another rock band. Well, that’s one nice thing about Bing, you can hover over the results, and a site description pops up.

Similar results came up for Google, the first one being a skateboard site, not what I would have thought.

In the end, what it comes down to is that the hype about Bing being a more focused search engine may be just that, as it still needs a keyphrase to really know what the user wants. So, I guess the long tail phrases are not a thing of the past just yet!

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 12:49 am and is filed under Current Events, General, Reviews, Search Marketing, Web news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.