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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

#51

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

s3r3nity wrote: post #44

1) I always recommend to my friends to give Cortana more than a 5 second consideration - especially if they're Windows users. Since Cortana primarily uses Bing, there's always a hesitation - but it's surprisingly fun and an effective AI "assistant." I'm still working on understanding the Office 365 capabilities, as I discover some cool ones here and there Example that blew away a colleague at work using a Surface Pro…

"but because we made the search while Excel was opened, the function was auto-populated in the highlighted cell." - which version of Excel was this? The desktop version (2010, 2013, 2016?) or the XAML version? I'd be surprised if Cortana integrated with the desktop version, considering Office doesn't run in Windows 10's sandbox model, and Microsoft is only allowing sandboxed apps access to the cooler features of Win10.

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

#52

Post by Veedrac »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #39
Veedrac wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search tools → All results → Verbatim This prevents basically all of Google's word heuristics, like searching for related words or dropping parts of the search.

I didn't know that one, since I use Google search without JavaScript enabled. Show me how to do that search qualification ahead of time, e.g. from the Firefox search box, and not as a post processing step after a search is completed. Or how to do that without JavaScript enabled. That kind of thing was easily possible before. A long time ago I bought a book called Google Hacks[1]. It had all sorts of good tips on how…

> I didn't know that one, since I use Google search without JavaScript enabled.

I just tried Google with JS disabled. It's right at the side:

http://i.imgur.com/WB4HH58.png

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

#53

Post by [deleted] »

izendejas wrote: post #9

Bing does not support literal searches. This is a dealbreaker for me, particularly since their language models aren't very precise if at all employed. I believe this is why many developers will find Google is a lot better. A lot of our searches are very specific error messages, for example.

[deleted]

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

#54

Post by KirinDave »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #2

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…

When we did user studies at Powerset, we did experiments where we put the Google name above search results from other engines and the Google was the strongest predictor.

One test actually used a randomized ranking function on wikipedia search (so the algorithm recalled as well as google, but randomly ranked the results without any thought to relevance) vs Google, and we labeled the random data as Google and the Google result as Yahoo!. Testing told us the garbage data with the G over it was better.

I dunno what you wanna do with that data. Maybe some soul searching? Funny story, though.

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

#55

Post by danbolt »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #51
s3r3nity wrote: post #44

1) I always recommend to my friends to give Cortana more than a 5 second consideration - especially if they're Windows users. Since Cortana primarily uses Bing, there's always a hesitation - but it's surprisingly fun and an effective AI "assistant." I'm still working on understanding the Office 365 capabilities, as I discover some cool ones here and there Example that blew away a colleague at work using a Surface Pro…

"but because we made the search while Excel was opened, the function was auto-populated in the highlighted cell." - which version of Excel was this? The desktop version (2010, 2013, 2016?) or the XAML version? I'd be surprised if Cortana integrated with the desktop version, considering Office doesn't run in Windows 10's sandbox model, and Microsoft is only allowing sandboxed apps access to the cooler features of Win1…

I'd imagine the non-XAML version has a lot longer of a feature list, but would you be familiar between the differences between the two?

I'd be curious to see XAML adoption with respect to usage.

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

#56

Post by eyelidlessness »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #2

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…

In my experience, Bing is substantially better than Google for certain use cases.

Google tends to be better for things I'm looking for very specifically, unless those things are likely to match DMCA takedown search terms (where there are DMCA notices at the bottom of results pages).

Bing tends to be better for things that are vaguely like what I'm searching for, and for specifics if they're likely to match DMCA takedown search terms.

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

#57

Post by PhantomGremlin »

Veedrac wrote: post #52
PhantomGremlin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know that one, since I use Google search without JavaScript enabled. Show me how to do that search qualification ahead of time, e.g. from the Firefox search box, and not as a post processing step after a search is completed. Or how to do that without JavaScript enabled. That kind of thing was easily possible before. A long time ago I bought a book called Google Hacks[1]. It had all sorts of good tips on how…

> I didn't know that one, since I use Google search without JavaScript enabled. I just tried Google with JS disabled. It's right at the side: http://i.imgur.com/WB4HH58.png

Okay, thanks for working with me on this.

I wasn't seeing that text because: Firefox prevented this page from automatically redirecting to another page. If I "allow" that redirection, then it shows what's in your image. And it properly refines the results without needing help from JavaScript.

Firefox is probably doing that because under Preferences -> Advanced I have checked the box: Warn me when websites try to redirect or reload the page. I just tried a virgin Firefox installation and that box is not checked by default. I don't know if it was the default in older versions, or if I flipped it myself.

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

#58

Post by SerLava »

jkmcf wrote: post #5

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

I do this too, especially when Google insists it knows my question better than I do. I'll actually Google the word "bing" in this case.

It feels like a vote of no confidence. I would be absolutely shocked if Google's algorithm doesn't have a special alarm bell for "2 dozen search query redefinitions and then they typed fucking 'Bing' into me."

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

#59

Post by frik »

winteriscoming wrote: post #30
izendejas wrote: post #9

Bing does not support literal searches. This is a dealbreaker for me, particularly since their language models aren't very precise if at all employed. I believe this is why many developers will find Google is a lot better. A lot of our searches are very specific error messages, for example.

I haven't used Bing and I mostly use Duckduckgo and Google. It's really surprising to hear that Bing doesn't support literal searches. Genuine question - for a search engine, aren't literal searches much more easier to implement?

Btw DuckDuckGo is based on Yahoo search which itself is based on Bing. I tried DDG but I cannot live with its high response time (obviously can't be improve due two times indirection) and the Bing results are worse.

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

#60

Post by SerLava »

graeme wrote: post #24

Anyone have a reference for Bing specific SEO? I mean, in the technical sense. I've noticed my site ranks significantly worse in Bing/DDG than on Google. All I've done for Google is on page SEO, nothing fancy or Google specific. I'm wondering if I've set something up incorrectly that I could fix via Bing Webmaster tools or some other method. Update: Apparently, this is not so. I now rank the same in DDG/Bing as in Go…

If I'm understanding correctly, you're seeing a fake rank increase due to personalization. Bing figured out what you're looking for(your site), so it bumps it up the page. Try a device you haven't used yet?

If not, it's hard to say why. There are a few factors.

-Bing might have taken longer to crawl new content.

-Bing seems to value exact keyword matches more than Google does.

-Google likes to show multiple types of content if a query's intent is ambiguous. Bing tends not to do this.

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