When Microsoft first introduced their new search engine technology earlier this year, many people thought it would be a Google killer. While it’s true that Bing is steadily gaining market share over the search engine giant, there are a few things to consider when wondering whether or not Bing will be able to displace the king of search. Bing advertises itself as a decision engine instead of a search engine, and this is an accurate description. The Bing algorithm differs from that of Google in that it searches for terms which are similar to yours, rather than searching for exactly what you typed. Over the years, search engines have gotten smarter, but Bing takes this technology one step further by trying to rationalize exactly what you’re looking for. A good example of this is a search for panda bears, in which Bing would display the results. The top three results are a Wikipedia article on panda bears, a site which gives locations of all the zoos in the world which house panda bears, and another website which has an artists art dedicated to the panda bear. Each of these search results is distinctive in that it has given a different result based on what it thinks you’re looking for. Search results on Google return the Wikipedia article, but then it degrades from there until finally, the sponsored links are linking to a chinese restaurant known as Panda Express. The Google algorithm is aging, but with so many people clinging tightly to it, it’s not likely that Bing will replace it any time soon. Google has taken note of the market share which Bing has gained over the past few months, as they have begun cleaning up their search engine algorithm and website and fine tuning how results are displayed. Google now has the ability to display real time results from social network sites like Twitter, something Bing has yet to do.
