Microsoft Bing: Five Areas in Search of Improvement
Microsoft Bing, Redmond's new answer to Google search, got a warm reception last week and shows some promising features. But these five annoying features need fine-tuning — or perhaps the boot.
CIO — Microsoft has taken its first steps in redefining search with its "decision engine," releasing Bing to a generally positive reception and with a new TV ad that portrays Google (with out mentioning it by name) as a disorganized returner of random links.
Bing did surprise many a reviewer last week with its user-friendly interface and ability to logically organize content on a results page. It was hard to find a review that panned Bing and the tool has already shown a bump in search share, according to market researcher comScore.
But the margin of error for Bing is tiny against established powerhouse Google. With that in mind, here are a five features that could use some fine-tuning, or perhaps, an early death.
Redundancy in Categories
Bing's categorized search results are meant to break up links on the page into logical sections. For instance, search results for the Boston Celtics are categorized by Schedule, Roster, Tickets, Cheerleaders, Images and Video.
Yet these search headings lead to a lot of scrolling down the page to find what you want. At the same time the headings are redundant because these same categories are listed in the Explorer Pane in the navigation menu in the left hand column.
Quick Preview Box Acts Flaky
Despite having the good intention of accelerating access to information, the Quick Preview feature, which allows you to mouse over a small orange dot next to links on a results page and get a text-based summary of what's on that site, often just repeats the sentence or two that is under the link.
What's worse: the preview pop-up box doesn't always appear right away and sometimes it doesn't appear at all. Often there's no text in the box, or the text isn't all that relevant.
For example, the Quick Preview for "BusinessWeek magazine" pulls two random paragraphs from the latest issue when what you want is a blurb on what topics it covers, etc.
When the Quick Preview feature works, it's quite useful. But it needs to work perfectly all the time or it will get annoying.
Travel Tools Somewhat Buried
Strangely, some of the features that Microsoft seems proudest of are not at your fingertips like they should be.
One example is airfare deals. Using technology acquired from the purchase of Farecast in 2008, Bing now has a built-in tool for comparing airfares and hotel prices. It uses a predictive algorithm to recommend the best time to buy a ticket.
That tool sounds cool, and it is. If you can find it. The "Travel" link on the main Bing page is the gateway to all the hotel and airfare features. But if you miss this link (and it's easy to miss) and you just type in, say, "Boston to San Francisco" you go to a results page with scattered links about the two cities. The same applies when your search is coming from a search field in a browser.
