So I started looking at Bing search from Microsoft and I must say that at first impressions I am pleased, much more so than when I tried out the Live.com search.

I like the interface, it is clean and makes sense when you are navigating; I am a big fan of the flyout that happens when you hover over a table of a link that you are looking at, it gives you a nice summary of the page and any link to relevant pages from within that page. here is any example of when I searched for my company name:

Nice right?

The other feature that I really liked was the Video interface, searching for videos was good and the results were displayed with the ability to hover over the video and it will start to play. This is really nice to see if it was the video that you were looking for. Though Leo Leporte from TWIT.TV did bring up an interesting question about how this function is using fairuse and is just showing the video in a thumbnail enough to qualify, I hope so because I would hate to see the feature go.

So I am going to give Bing a try for the week and see how it goes, I will post back here as the week progresses, stay tuned for more updates for the experience.

Wed the 3rd:

So I was working out of a customers office this week doing a SharePoint build and saw that the client was giving Bing a try also, we talked about how searches were going and if the results seamed to match up with what we were used to with Google.

I have really been impressed with the speed in which my results have been returned, no lag time. The interface has been a refreshing change from Google, I get tired of the minimumalistic look of the Google page sometime. The Bing start page is as nice to look at as my desktop wallpaper most times. and the page that has the resaults is simple and clean.

Well it is the end of week one and I am going to continue to use Bing as my default search engine for now, the results that I have been getting and the order that they are served up is makes sense and is appealing to read.

Microsoft has labeled this search as decision engine as opposed to a search engine, the focus being on well organized results and less time sifting through some of the junk that makes it to the top pages of Google search. We will see how well this plays out in the long run as web site owners learn how to optimize their pages for better listings on the Bing page.

Bing and Goolg results for Weather

My thanks to Bing and a congratulations to Microsoft on putting out a decent Search ..... excuse me decision engine, and taking the number 2 spot from Yahoo Search, and to Paul Thurott and his insightful look at Bing and his blog: Bing Beta Review Part 1: The Making of a Decision Engine