Bing it to search and find answers
June 18, 2009
Bing (www.bing.com) is Microsoft's new search engine for the Internet. It's described as a "decision engine" to help us find answers to our online searches. With about a trillion web pages now online, the days of scrolling through pages and pages of a list of sites that may have the answer to our query are over so we need a better way to find information.
Saving clicks
Let's say we want to see some prices for new TV sets. So load bing.com in your browser, type in tv sets and we're told at the top that there are 96,100,00 results - uh? Who's got time to view 96 million web pages to find information?
On the left-hand side of Bing's screen under Related Searches is a list of other possibilities for our search including Cheap TV set, Best TV set and LCD TV sets. In other words, instead of typing in tv sets as our query, we could have thought a bit more about what words to use to narrow down the list of sites, i.e. bring up a manageable number of sites to read through.
Another way that Bing helps is we can hover the mouse over the right-hand side of each site's summary to view more information from the site. As well, at the bottom of the summary are links to various sections of the site so we can click through directly to a particular section of the site to read the available information.
At the top under the search query text box you'll notice that we can choose show all results from the whole web or just from Australian sites - choose only from Australia and our search for a TV set now gives just over a million results - still a lot of sites to check out. Under Related Searches on the left-hand side of the page, there are links to help narrow down the search for a TV set by price (cheap or the best) and type (LCD).
Choosing the LCD sets link, for example, brings up another page of results with another list of related searches on the left-hand side. One option in the list is to view results for HDTV sets and further related searches will bring up information on particular brands.
Comparison shopping
To see Bing's power we need to change Bing from the Australian edition to the US edition. Go to the top right of the web page, click Australia and choose United States - English from the list of countries. Now you'll see a page that includes choices to use the Cashback scheme (Australian stores aren't there yet) and categories such as top brands, price ranges for the amount you're prepared to spend and links to guides about TV sets.
The left-hand column of the screen now has links to enable you to easily search by brand name and price with a single click so you can continue your quest for the most suitable TV set.
Travel
Use Bing to find cheap flights by either going to bing.com/travel or click on Travel on the front page of the US editon.
From the tabs at the top of the page, choose Flights and enter details of your departure and destination. When you begin typing the city from which you want to depart, suggestions pop up as to what's available. Similarly, you'll have suggestions for your destination. Choose when you want to fly (click the calendar icon to select the date) and then click the Search flights orange button. You'll be presented with a page of information of all possible flights for the time period.
The left-hand column has more options to narrow your search - you can adjust departure and arrival time, price range and the airlines you might use. More information is available for US flights where you can see which fares are set to rise or fall in the near future.
Bing Travel not only give you flight information but as well there are hotel accommodation, cruises, car hire and holiday packages. For example, clicking on Cruises takes you to Orbitz where you can enter destination, departure date, cruise line and length of the cruise vacation.
Video search
Often we're searching for information on how to do things such as diy projects around the house, wiring up the tv, set top box and dvd player or preparing a special meal. The best way to get this information is through a video so use Bing's video search for this task.
The page of results from a video search shows thumbnails and hovering over the thumbnail will automatically begin playing the video so it's easy to check if a particular video gives you the answers you're looking for.
In fact, in this day and age, it's probably a good idea to use video search for most searches rather than the old-fashioned text search - somebody, somewhere will have a created a video on a topic you want information about. Here's the link to the results for a video search on TV sets.
Searching for images
Another option for a specific type of search is to locate images and photos. This works as it did in Live Search and there are options to narrow your search by properties such as size, layout and colour.
Bing Maps
When you're looking for a restaurant for a night out, use the Maps tab to bring up locations around the city of your choice. You get the restaurant's location and phone number by hovering over the pin on the map as well as being able to get more details. In the listing on the left-hand side, you can get driving directions and visit the restaurant's web site.
Naturally you can still explore locations around the world on Bing Maps by choosing the Locations tab and entering the city or country you're interested in.
Bing background imagery and hotspots
The United States - English version of Bing uses background images which contain hotspots. You can find them by hovering your mouse over the image. These hotspots provide information about the location depicted in the background image and makes for some interesting reading (and filling in time!).
Longzheng has an online archive of each background image for each day so, if you don't use Bing for a day or two, you can catch up. Note there are two images each day, one for the United States with hotspots, the other image for the rest of the world.