Join The Experiment: One Week Of Bing Only Searching

Martin Brinkmann
Jun 2, 2009
Updated • Dec 10, 2012
Microsoft, Search
|
20

What better way to test a new or improved search engine than to be stuck with it for a full week without being able to fall back to other search engines. Bing is the new Microsoft search engine and we would like to invite each and everyone of you to test the ins and outs of the new search engine by forcing yourself to use it. We have created a set of rules in case you want to join the experiment so that you know what you are allowed to do and what not (not that we are going to punish you if you perform the occasional search using another search engine).

Bing Experiment Rules:

  • Use Bing exclusively for all of your searches for the next seven days
  • Write down what went well and what did not
  • Let us know your overall experience and rating of the search engine after the week
  • You may perform the exact same search in another search engine to compare results
  • You may also perform the exact same search in another search engine if Bing does not provide the results that you expect
  • You may use other search engines to look at search engine rankings

Now that we have established the rules of the experiment we would like to offer participants an incentive to take part. We are going to give away five Ghacks t-shirts to five random participants providing that we get that many users participating.

We would like to hear about your thoughts and experience with Bing. If you have anything to say let us hear about it. Check out Install Bing Search In Selected Web Browsers and our initial short review of Microsoft Bing.

Advertisement

Tutorials & Tips


Previous Post: «
Next Post: «

Comments

  1. Zero said on October 27, 2011 at 9:02 pm
    Reply

    I’m in! Completely swapped over to bing. google is an epic failure!

  2. Saurabh said on June 9, 2009 at 3:23 pm
    Reply

    Sorry I submitted my above comment without completing and wasn’t able to complete it because javascript was turned off. From that I remember that noscript prevented me from taking advantage of the previews in bing and I noticed the previews only today. Still it seems just a waste of bandwidth.

  3. Saurabh said on June 9, 2009 at 3:12 pm
    Reply

    Going back to google. Bing is not bad. All general searches came up good. But Google is just too good. I’ve been liking the Forums search of Google lately and dont want to miss it.. It helps. On the whole Google results seem more relevant though I didn’t see as much of a gap as in Google and the earlier Live Search.
    Google seems better updated. I
    Somethings I didn’t like: failure to show news results

  4. rruben said on June 4, 2009 at 7:29 pm
    Reply

    I have read some rumors that the dutch version of bing (beta still) is just live search with a new skin.

    Is that the reason why I notice too often chinese and japanese websites in the bing serp’s?

    Sorry MS Bing, I can’t read both of them.

    I give up and go back to Google and may try again when the Dutch Bing is out of beta.

  5. Tom said on June 4, 2009 at 7:23 pm
    Reply

    I mildly enjoy it when Microsoft fails Microsoft.

    To make this make sense let me explain, my company as an asinine policy regarding standardized fonts. Well one user lost this setting so I had to find how to set it up again. Bing succeeded with Word and Outlook but after many variations of searching “Default font for excel 2007” all I got was 2003, one Google search later the top result solved my problem.

    Google 1, Bing 0

  6. Womble said on June 3, 2009 at 9:46 pm
    Reply

    @Martin my comment is a little more tongue and cheek than is obvious.

    I would argue though that if you want competition Microsoft probably aren’t the right people to be supporting. How would google stand a chance if Microsoft got a foothold when IE defaults to their own search by default, if it was felt Bing was good enough people would stop bothering to change their homepage, game over!

  7. Tom said on June 3, 2009 at 4:10 pm
    Reply

    My initial review is that I don’t particularly love the result page interface but do enjoy the search history on the sidebar. ‘

    Also when searching for major news sites, CNN and Fox for example it brings back only their main pages in the main result section, below the main section they have the top headlines from that page, and then on either side they have related searches such as MSNBC, CBS News, Yahoo, etc…

    Gotta say that is pretty sweet.

  8. John said on June 3, 2009 at 12:34 am
    Reply

    “When I type the title of this post into bing there is no useful hit (this page should have been on #1)”

    Switch from the local country version to United States – English

    http://www.bing.com/worldwide.aspx

    It makes a real difference!!!!!!!!!!

  9. Womble said on June 3, 2009 at 12:24 am
    Reply

    Three articles in two days about a search engine that people generally have little interest in?

    How much was the bung?

    1. Martin said on June 3, 2009 at 12:40 am
      Reply

      Do you imply that the posts were sponsored? I can assure you that this was not the case. I just think it would be nice to give Bing a fair chance. Some competition would be really nice in the search engine market.

  10. Paul said on June 2, 2009 at 11:08 pm
    Reply

    Search Google & Bing at the same time http://bit.ly/3wiceZ

  11. Tom said on June 2, 2009 at 10:08 pm
    Reply

    I’m in, I’ve always felt it best that if you are going to hate on something you must be very familiar with it.

  12. Lux said on June 2, 2009 at 9:22 pm
    Reply

    And why not sell your soul to the devil while you’re at it? Blood is the new ink etc.

    1. Zero said on October 27, 2011 at 8:59 pm
      Reply

      Too late for that! You’ve already sold your soul to the devil that is google. Worst organisation to pick if you’re worried about privacy and data theft! google is evil!

  13. RG said on June 2, 2009 at 7:52 pm
    Reply

    I am in, will start today. As I commented in your other story my very initial impression was ok, not great but ok.

  14. Saurabh said on June 2, 2009 at 7:20 pm
    Reply

    Yeah , I was thinking of the same thing. After the recent paranoia in the blogworld about handing over too much data to Google , I wanted to at least try out the other search engines. After 2 days of Yahoo, 1 day of DuckDuckGo(Heard of it the first time 2 days back) and now 1 day of Bing, I found that the other search engines are not that bad. Lets see how the next seven days fold out. :)

  15. rruben said on June 2, 2009 at 6:31 pm
    Reply

    When I type the title of this post into bing there is no useful hit (this page should have been on #1)

    When I do the same in google it’s up there.

    Which means Google updates faster.

    That says enough to me, but I will try to use it ;)

Leave a Reply

Check the box to consent to your data being stored in line with the guidelines set out in our privacy policy

We love comments and welcome thoughtful and civilized discussion. Rudeness and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Please stay on-topic.
Please note that your comment may not appear immediately after you post it.