Microsoft recently released a new search engine called Bing. I have used it a few times and have been impressed. It seems to work well although I am not yet convinced that it is any better than Google. Lots of discussions have appeared online, questioning which is the better search engine: Bing or Google. Now you can decide for yourself.
Bing-Vs-Google.com is a simple web page that allows you to conduct two searches at once: one on Google and another on Bing. You go to http://www.bing-vs-google.com, enter the search term of interest, and a split screen appears. Search results from Bing are shown in the panel to the left while search results for Google are shown in the panel to the right. (There are options to display the results in other ways as well.)
Simple.
I think I will use Bing-Vs-Google.com as my default search engine for at least the next few days. I rather like the two searches at once format.
Try it out at http://www.bing-vs-google.com.
What does Bing stand for? "But It's Not Google!"
www.metacrawler.com has been around since at least the 90s and searchs a large set of other search engines. Why not use the big boy and forget worrying about what one search engine finds and another misses.
Posted by: Frank Phillips | July 10, 2009 at 10:13 AM
Just did a search for my user name that I use right now and found sooo much more with google.
Posted by: Erin Bradford | July 10, 2009 at 10:36 AM
While on the topic of new search engines give Wolfram Alpha a try.
It is intelligent and will answer complex questions and we can only hope that someday it will respond to "who are my ancestors?"
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Posted by: Bob Dawes | July 10, 2009 at 10:44 AM
I have 27 complex Google searches saved to my bookmarks. Bing choked on all of them (ie. it doesn't have the capability of using all of the complex operators that Google does). After dumbing my searches down so Bing could understand them I got 2 searches out of 27 that gave me 3 links that Google didn't. I think I'll be sticking with Google. I don't have the time to split my searches between two engines just for the sake of a little preview window.
Posted by: Greg Matthews | July 10, 2009 at 07:56 PM
Just trying one simple search, Bing gave a result of eight while Google gave a result of 327. While one or two of Bing's result were "out of context" (i.e., a result based on havng the two words in the result but not associated with each other), most of the "extra" 319 Google results were "out of context". Some of these "out of context" result were of interest, but most were not. But the main thing is that Google gave many more "in context" results than did Bing. In other words, Google found much more than Bing including many more false positives as well.
Of course, a single search is not meaningful, but it seems representative of the other half dozen Bing/Google searches that I have done albeit not simultaneously as was this.
Interesting. Thanks, Dick.
Posted by: Lee Hoffman | July 11, 2009 at 08:22 AM
The idea of multiple search engines appealed to me over 5 years ago when I switched to Copernic Agent. It is a neat search agent that polls several search engines and delivers the combined results. You can save and organize your searches for re-use. There's even a lifetime FREE version to get you hooked, er, I mean started. You'll find it at http://www.Copernic.com.
Happy Dae·
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com
Posted by: Dae Powell | July 11, 2009 at 08:31 AM
I started using Bing when it was called 'Live Search' and was quite impressed when compared with Google. When Bing came along I compared again and found Google was superior. I think Bing "improved" Google!
Posted by: Joan Henshaw | July 11, 2009 at 04:09 PM
My own various tests with Bing searching for my surname yielded many fewer hits (10x fewer) and of a subjectively lower quality than Google. I don't plan on switching. I'm kicking myself for not making more frequent use of a metacrawler type tool though. Gotta check that out.
If I'm not mistaken, isn't Bing just the new name for Live Search, which used to be Windows Live Search, which used to be MSN Search when it first came out in 1998. According to Net App, from 1998 until today Google has grown from 57.2% market share to 81.2%. Microsoft's search has dropped from 14% to 5.9%. I'm not sure a name change and different UI are going to alter that trend.
Posted by: Robert Kehrer | July 16, 2009 at 06:58 PM
Our preliminary assessment of Microsoft's new search engine Bing indicates that it is not as good as Google at finding genealogy records. It is, however, pretty good at finding living relatives. This raises an interesting aspect of search engines. Genealogy records are (by definition) archived records. Most search engines these days focus on live content not archived content. Google is one of the few search engines that has the capability and resources to reach to the far corners of the web, which is where many archived records reside. However, I would not rule Microsoft out. Give Bing six months to see whether it's webcrawlers have managed to get to more genealogy records.
Miles Whittingham
http://www.genealogyintime.com
Posted by: Miles Whittingham | July 16, 2009 at 11:09 PM
I tried the Bing vs Google site and it was interesting. I entered about 10 names in quotes to narrow it to "exact phrase," all names of deceased people, and Google was WAY more comprehensive in it's site indexing. I then inputted living celebrity names - same thing. They have a long way to go to catch up.
Posted by: Doug Sinclair | July 17, 2009 at 07:03 PM
I did some testing of Bing and do not think it as good for genealogy searches as Google. Some of the things I found are:
1. Bing does not have a Book Search capability. A lot of great genealogy information is found in the books that Google has available for searching.
2. Bing does not have a date range search. For example if I want to find an ancestor in the census from 1900 to 1920, I can add the date range search 1900..1920 using Google. It searches within the date range specified. Very useful.
3. Bing does not have a similar word search. For example, if I want to find death records, I can add a tilda to the front of the word ~death using Google. It will give me words that are synonyms for the word in the results.
4. Bing doesn't appear to find results when searching for surnames with foreign letters. For example, KÜRSCHNER returns correct results. Bing doesn't understand the Ü.
Posted by: Matthew Combs | July 18, 2009 at 08:09 PM