What do Microsoft and Google have in common? They are both industry titans and both of them have a strong research and development team that keeps churning out new services and applications more than once a year. The year 2009 has definitely started with a bang for Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as they are getting good reviews for their innovative approaches towards the subject/area of Internet search and communications.

So much so that co-founder of Apple Inc., Steve Wozniak mentioned to a reporter that he’s “a big fan, now” of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which according to him is “astounding”. Why is the Bing gaining so much popularity? The Bing search engine actually does a lot more where surface information is concerned vis-à-vis Google. Let’s look at an example: If you are searching for a particular company then you will find that some of the top results on the search engine page will show links to the company’s store locator, customer service, and similar but relevant and helpful information.

Bing is considered as a great alternative to the Google search engine and in fact any other search engine, because it will help you save a lot of time as well as the hassle of trying to find specific information within a website. So if you want to go to “contact us”, you don’t have to really visit the homepage of a website and click from there; you can directly go from the Bing search page.

According to experts of the industry, using Bing means that you will get to see the Internet through the corporate values of Microsoft. For example: Bing will always bring up the best match for your keywords right on top vis-à-vis the most popular in Google. Another salient aspect of Microsoft’s Bing is that it is easy to use.

Microsoft Bing is now ready for testing and developers are being invited to use the Beta version. According to Microsoft spokesman, “Bing is a brand new “decision engine” that was supposed to come out late last week, but we only had a placeholder over at Bing.com. Now though the Bing search engine is live, and while some of the features impress, we’re not always getting the results we hoped for.”

Bing is attractive and above all, the name is easy to remember. The relevant search terms in Bing will appear on the left hand column. Another great functionality is the location sensing application. If you type in weather then it will bring up the forecast for the location from where you are using Bing. For example: If you are based in Pittsburg, PA and if you are using Bing.com then it will provide the weather forecast for Pittsburg, PA automatically. That is certainly being one up on Google. Bing also offers search filters on the side of the image tab advanced search options and for playing videos as you hover the mouse over the thumbnail. Bing excels vis-à-vis Google on more than one count.

Joel McLaughlin

Dataflurry, Professional search engine optimization services – Dataflurry is an online search engine marketing firm, with a special focus on organic seo consulting and services.