Mrs. Mecomber's Scrapbook Talking technology, computers, and the Internet… for the average computer user

Bing is the new search engine, released by Microsoft. I’ve been reading about it but I never checked it out thoroughly until today. It’s so great to see Google get some really healthy competition, and I had high hopes that Bing just do that… but there’s a caveat to Bing. CNet did a nice review of Bing, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents, too. First, the basics:

1.
Bing is easy to use. I did a quick search for “New York Traveler” to see where I showed up. My New York Traveler.net blog is an extremely popular blog, and I figure it should score high in the search engines. Bing nailed the phrase as #1 in the results, yay!

Google is much more tepid for New York Traveler.net. My old blog, New York Traveler at Blogspot, scores high as the #1 website for the phrase (and Blogspot is owned by Google), but New York Traveler.net doesn’t even show up on the first several pages. :-p I monetize New York Traveler.net, which Google does not like, so Google penalizes me for it. It stinks. So it’s really great to see my blog show up as #1 on Bing. And the NY Blogspot blog shows up as #3. So I think Microsoft has something good going here with Bing, as far as relevant and less arbitrary results.

2.
Bing took longer to load than Google. It took 1/2 a minute for Google to load the results, but I waited twice as long for Bing. That’s not too bad, it’s just longer. If you want to compare the two search engines side-by-side, there is a very neat website that allows you to compare Google and Bing in the same window.

3.
Bing is more pleasant to use. It has nice background images, and it’s easier to navigate. Google looks stiff and sterile in comparison. Also, if you hover your mouse cursor over a search result, Bing will pop up an excerpt of the text. It also does this for videos– if you hover over a video, it will start playing. This can be helpful if you want to check out content before clicking links, but it also causes a very unpleasant thing to happen– porn videos and text. Apparently, Bing has no real suitable filter for porn. Microsoft just released a special filter.

Microsoft says it has adjusted its freshly-launched Bing search engine to make it easier to filter out porn.

Adults-only images and video will be served from a separate domain, explicit.bing.net, so that content can easily be barred from Bing search results, according to Bing general manager Mike Nichols.

“This is invisible to the end customer, but allows for filtering of that content by domain which makes it much easier for customers at all levels to block this content,” Nichols said in a message atop an official Bing website.

Also, information about which domain potentially explicit pictures or video are coming from will be served up in a manner that makes it more apparent to content filtering software, according to Nichols.

A couple things about this– 1, Microsoft should have planned for this from the get-go. Porn is so prevalent on the Internet, it is unconscionable that it was “forgotten” as part of the plan. I really have to question Microsoft’s handling of the search engine. I think MS is light on porn– one look at their msn.com site reveals what their philosophy is about that kind of stuff, IMHO. 2, their advice to users to ban their newly-created separate domain, explicit.bing.net, is easily circumvented. 3, why have ANY porn on Bing anyway, at all?? The search engine is marketed by Microsoft as a “Decision Engine”, a portal “aimed at helping people make buying decisions, plan trips, research health matters or find local businesses.” Why have porn at all?

4.
I’m not going to use Bing for this reason (#3). I’m just going to ban Bing in my OpenDNS settings. This is what Kim Komando had to say about Bing, and I agree:

This problem has raised a storm of concern. Microsoft, which has big hopes for Bing, reacted quickly. It set up a separate domain— explicit.bing.net—to filter porn. You can block that domain in your browser.

Someone could still look up porn. All the results will still be listed. But explicit videos show up as black boxes.

I could show you how to set this up in a browser. But again, there isn’t a point. The black boxes still work. Hover the mouse over a black box, and you still get porn.

Additionally, the explicit filtering isn’t perfect. Bing fails to recognize some porn videos. Any way you block it, some crud slips through.

Your best recourse is to simply block Bing. I hate to say that. I want to like Bing. It does some innovative and useful things. You should see what it can do for travel planning. It’s sad that this single oversight ruins the experience.

I’ve blocked Bing at home and at the office using OpenDNS.

OpenDNS is a free DNS service and valuable tool. You can read about it here if you are interested.

As far as Bing goes, I think it’s final score is: mediocre. It’s pretty and fun to play with, but it isn’t that much better than Google, and the porn issue is an offensive and insurmountable obstacle. Bimg bombs. :-p