Bing is Beautiful

By Carla Arbagey on March 1, 2013 • ( 1 )

Bing on 3/01/2013

My Month with Bing has ended. Even though it was the shortest month of 2013, I learned a lot about Bing and Google, and search engines in general. I was surprised and delighted by many of the features I found via Bing, and I enjoyed promoting Bing as a Google alternative.

After 28 days of searching with Bing, comparing it to Google, and writing in this blog, what I can conclude is that there is no clear winner in the Bing vs. Google match-up. Each has its own style and features, its own way of showing you results. Bing is good for certain things, while Google is better for others. What is important to remember is that you have a choice between the two, or you can choose to use both.

One of the first things I learned in an internet searching class in library school is that if at first you don’t succeed, try a different search strategy. Never give up! Attack that difficult search with your full arsenal of searching tools. Try different phrases, words, synonyms, or slang, and, yes, try a different search engine!

With that in mind, I have made the decision to stick with Bing. It’s for a very superficial reason – I like the pictures that change every day on Bing. I like how they can spark my curiosity to learn something new, and they’re just plain beautiful to look at. Further, the results for most searches that I do are just as good as Google, if not exactly the same. I will still use Google for some things, and especially for difficult searches, but for me, the verdict is Bing.

What’s next? Looking back on my thoughts and posts from this month, I feel like the results aren’t as “academic” as they could be. And that’s fine – I wanted to approach the topic from the average user’s point of view, and appeal to a wider audience. I have been inspired to conduct my own research after reviewing the Comparative Study of Google and Bing Search Engines article. I will use their same method of ranking by precision and recall, except I plan on coming up with search terms that will appeal to an American audience (you will recall that the authors of the study are Indian), and that are more in line with what people are searching for right now. I’m checking all of the “Top Searches of 2012” lists from Bing, Google, and the UCR Libraries website, to come up with my list of searches. It’s looking a bit scary at the moment – Justin Bieber was topping all of them! So if you have any good ideas about what search terms I should include in my study, let me know.

I’m taking a short break from posting to set up my study, but I’ll be back soon to let you know all about it and to share my results. I will be presenting my study to the librarians’ group here at UCR, and hopefully doing a poster session at the California Library Association 2013 Annual Conference in Novemeber.

For your enjoyment, here are some Bing wallpapers I especially like. More can find at Bing or The Wallpaper Downloader site. Click on any of the images below to see a slideshow of the full-size version and photo credits.