21 Days of Bing Search: How good (or bad) it really is?
Background
Bing is a search engine from Microsoft and is the 2nd most popular search engine in the world after Google (3.4% Market share vs 92% of Google). Bing was introduced in 2009 as a succession of MS Live search. While Bing has grown significantly over the years, it has been unable to break the monopoly of Google. With the advent of GenAI and Microsoft’s stronghold through CoPilot and OpenAI collaboration, Bing Search has seen tremendous changes in the preceding years.
21 days of Bing
To understand what constitutes Bing and how good it is for end users, I have been exclusively using Bing (with occasional Google searches) for the last 3 weeks. I set Bing as my default search engine across Web, Mobile Web and downloaded Mobile Apps (Bing, Copilot). I even added a widget on my phone's home screen.
The goal was to fully experience Bing and answer the question - is Bing a good enough product to replace Google?
Summary of Findings
What I liked:
Reward points for searching
Seamless integration between Bing and Copilot
UX of Search results (especially for informative queries)
What could have been better:
Search relevance for certain categories
Tab switching while clicking any link (even images)
Creates a tab for all recent searches (on mobile app)
Product Deep-dive
Gamification (Microsoft Rewards)
Bing uses gamification elements (reward points) to improve engagement and stickiness. There are task-based rewards to educate user about the available features/ types of searches.
Features of Bing Rewards -
Cross-platform implementaion: Reward points are common across web and mobile. Once you reach level 2, you get separate points for mobile and web search (The goal might be to improve cross-platform adoption).
Rewards Catalog: Attractive redemption options using popular gift cards like Flipkart and Amazon. (I redeemed a Rs 50 Flipkart voucher in <2 weeks of usage).
Bing-Copilot Integration
On the web as well as app, there is a seamless integration between search and copilot, where it leverages copilot (GPT) enhance to search results and there is a easy transition between the two on web and on app.
UX of Search results
While in most cases, Google returns a series of relevant website links (this is also significantly changing now), Bing returns multiple forms of results - multiple wikipedia links, Copilot responses, smart widgets etc. It was often very engaging and helpful.
Search Relevance
Something that I did not like, there were some instances where the results were not relevant: Searched for tech news, top carousel showed irrelevant stories. Whereas a Google search for same keyword was much better.
Conclusion
Bing has come up with a great user-centric and AI-first approach for revamping Bing Search. It is also heavily focused on privacy and security. With these features, it has the potential to create a significant market for itself, if not as big as Google.
AI will change the way we search in the next few years, how quickly and how well these tools evolve will decide their existence in the future.
References-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bing