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Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

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Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#12
post #8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example? Sometimes it cannot find what I am searching for, but I have never thought it was intentional.

Try searching for 'hoogle'. What I want is this: https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/ - not the website I am already on typing a search query in to! tbf, I don't feel the same way as the GP. But this search always struck me as crazy in the past.

Odd, works for me: http://i.imgbox.com/gEw5Rutx.png What do you get?

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#14
post #3

At the moment I don't use Bing for two reasons: 1) it's Microsoft 2) it's not better than Google I'd gladly use it more if they would fix #2. Google has gotten horribly bad about not searching for what I ask it for. It's been castrated. It insists on returning what it thinks I want, not what I asked for. I know that for 99% of the people that's the right thing to do, but I really hate that Google has given the shaft…

Can you give an example? Sometimes it cannot find what I am searching for, but I have never thought it was intentional.

PhantomGremlin may be referring to Google's personalized search results[0]. This can be turned off though, either through account settings or opening a private window, I think.

However, it seems you can't shut off location-based personalization, at least while logged out. For example, search "pizza" without quotes in a private window. In addition to showing you a map with nearby locations based on geolocation, the actual results will also include pizza places near your geolocation. I can imagine that there are probably scenarios where that kind of personalization might negatively affect someone searching for general information, although I can't think of any particular use cases off the top of my head.

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Personalized_Search

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#15

At the moment I don't use Bing for two reasons: 1) it's Microsoft 2) it's not better than Google I'd gladly use it more if they would fix #2. Google has gotten horribly bad about not searching for what I ask it for. It's been castrated. It insists on returning what it thinks I want, not what I asked for. I know that for 99% of the people that's the right thing to do, but I really hate that Google has given the shaft…

I don't use it because I am turned off by the name, strange I know. It's a hard word to speak and it is a meaningless word.

Which? Google or Bing?

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#16
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example? Sometimes it cannot find what I am searching for, but I have never thought it was intentional.

PhantomGremlin may be referring to Google's personalized search results[0]. This can be turned off though, either through account settings or opening a private window, I think. However, it seems you can't shut off location-based personalization, at least while logged out. For example, search "pizza" without quotes in a private window. In addition to showing you a map with nearby locations based on geolocation, the ac…

I have noticed the geolocation search, ironically because it brings up the wrong results when I am on a vpn. If a search `weather`, I except local weather. But if I am on my work VPN, I get the weather for a few states away.

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#17

What numbers matter here? Usage? Traffic? Referrals? This article makes it seem like revenue? Just for the heck of it I just grepped the log on my one server. It's got about 200 different domains, mostly smaller sites. About 600k hits today. ~5,000 referrals from Google, ~200 from Bing. Strangely enough there seems to be about 11,000 hits from Bingbot and only about half that from Googlebot crawlers. I'd be intereste…

I know google models how often pages change so that googlebot's time is spent efficiently. Maybe bing expects more changes, or they think more checks result in better query results.

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#18
post #8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example? Sometimes it cannot find what I am searching for, but I have never thought it was intentional.

Try searching for 'hoogle'. What I want is this: https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/ - not the website I am already on typing a search query in to! tbf, I don't feel the same way as the GP. But this search always struck me as crazy in the past.

Not going to lie, I have seen people put Google into the Chrome omnibar, to then search something on Google. When I point the redundancy out to them, I am usually met with, 'Well that's just how I do it.' I bet there are more people doing that, and mistyping, than searching for a Haskell package.

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#19
post #5

I use Bing whenever I'm dissatisfied with Google's results. Bing has always returned worse results in this case. YMMV.

I moved to Bing a couple of months back and I do the opposite, i.e. turn to Google when I can't find what I'm looking for in Bing. On avg I'd say it's ~5% of the times for generic searches, ~10% for more technical stuff. Used to be much worse, and I disliked the UI very much while now I think it's on par with Google (both G and B have their pros/cons). I kind of like that they finally added News (I was using Google a lot as a newspaper) and that you can switch tabs and use it as a portal, while Google doesn't show any content until you start searching for something, which I'm not saying it's wrong, but sometimes I start browsing directly from Bing homepage if I like what it's suggesting, which never happens with Google. One thing they need to fix is the mobile app on Android though, because it's unusable, it keeps crashing and I've almost given up there.

Re: Microsoft's Bing Isn't a Joke Anymore

#20
post #3

At the moment I don't use Bing for two reasons: 1) it's Microsoft 2) it's not better than Google I'd gladly use it more if they would fix #2. Google has gotten horribly bad about not searching for what I ask it for. It's been castrated. It insists on returning what it thinks I want, not what I asked for. I know that for 99% of the people that's the right thing to do, but I really hate that Google has given the shaft…

Can you give an example? Sometimes it cannot find what I am searching for, but I have never thought it was intentional.

Can you give an example?

I've posted about this before, here's an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11386924

Here's a snippet from that post:

Nowadays, when I search for something like this:

   "search phrase one"  "search phrase two"
I will get a plethora of hits that omit one or the other of those words or phrases, starting with the very first page of results.
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