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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

#101

Post by onion2k »

zamalek wrote: post #99
onion2k wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the specific case that nol13 was talking about (using Bing to search for an Excel function), yes.

But not for scenarios like "what meetings do I have today?"

In the situation where you're using Cortana to search your meetings you have to give it permission to access your data for two reasons - to tell it that you agree to allow it to access the information and to pay the price of using the service by giving it access to your data. The 'payment' issue is still there.

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

#102

Post by aneidon »

lmmlzxx wrote: post #68
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'm not knowledgeable about Bing, but Google doesn't support literal searches either if you mean that in the sense of exact string matching.

It does. It's called verbatim mode, if I recall correctly.

Edit: verbatim not verbose

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

#104

Post by majewsky »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #79
thoman23 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course Google supports exact string matching. Just put your term in double quotes.

Mind you, it's overloaded now; double quotes also mean "this term must appear in the results." Used to be that prefixing with + meant that, but they killed that function so they could use it for Google Plus. You used to be able to search for, say, "annie oakley" "wild bill hickok" and find pages with either or both of those complete phrases; now there's no obvious way to do that. Many years ago, IIRC, Google Search a…

Probably because it produces confusing effects when people type in full sentences.

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

#105

Post by merlincorey »

2bitencryption wrote: post #87
frik wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

are you suggesting that DDG makes a call to Yahoo which then makes a call to Bing ("two times indirection")? Surely it's implemented differently than that, right?

It is definitely implemented differently than that. Yahoo has plenty of search engine knowledge and technology. There is surely some sort of process that inlines and caches any sort of query and result in Yahoo's backend. It's also fairly likely that they are using their own backend still for index storage and delivery, and they have some formal method of syncing the index from bing fairly regularly -- or even on demand for more long tail searches.

In other words, the most likely case where "double indirection" occurs is in very long tail searches that Yahoo has not seen recently.

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

#106

Post by toomanybeersies »

shalmanese wrote: post #90

Bing: The "is pepsi okay?" of search engines.

Slightly off topic, but I actually prefer Pepsi. I started drinking Pepsi rather than Coke because it's cheaper, not that I ever really disliked Pepsi, but now I find I actually like Pepsi better.

So really it's just conditioning whether people prefer Pepsi or Coke.

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

#107

Post by toomanybeersies »

mrweasel wrote: post #88
marssaxman wrote: post #62

I don't use Bing search, but I switched to Bing maps after Google's last set of changes rendered their map site effectively unusable. Bing maps has been.... really nice. I like it. It does what I want. I was not expecting that.

Bing maps is a great service, but you have to know it's there to use it. There's no link to the maps service on the Bing front page or the search result page. You need to know the URL. bing.com/maps is pretty easy to guess, but why hide it? I'm also a bit surprise that Bing video search is no longer available, at least not in Denmark.

maps.bing.com also works. So do images.bing.com and news.bing.com, so I guess they're following the Google schema for that.

Bing video search is available for me in New Zealand, interesting that it doesn't work for you in Denmark.

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

#108

Post by lmmlzxx »

gman99 wrote: post #78
lmmlzxx wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not knowledgeable about Bing, but Google doesn't support literal searches either if you mean that in the sense of exact string matching.

If you append &tbs=li to the end of the query URL, google does a literal search. If you want it as a default, add it to your browser as a search engine plugin: http://mycroftproject.com/search-engines.html?name=google+ve... Or: Search tools → All results → Verbatim

I am trying this right now, and it's not doing exact string matching. I mean case sensitive, special characters, etc.

To the poster below, putting the query in double quotes definitely does not do exact string matching.

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

#109

Post by lmmlzxx »

PudgePacket wrote: post #85
thoman23 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course Google supports exact string matching. Just put your term in double quotes.

It feels like they haven't for a while, eg this http://i.imgur.com/zEDt5tD.png

People have had this misconception for a long time about Google, I remember having this debate on HN 4 or 5 years ago. I'm not sure Google has ever supported truly exact string matching.

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

#110

Post by frik »

merlincorey wrote: post #105
2bitencryption wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you suggesting that DDG makes a call to Yahoo which then makes a call to Bing ("two times indirection")? Surely it's implemented differently than that, right?

It is definitely implemented differently than that. Yahoo has plenty of search engine knowledge and technology. There is surely some sort of process that inlines and caches any sort of query and result in Yahoo's backend. It's also fairly likely that they are using their own backend still for index storage and delivery, and they have some formal method of syncing the index from bing fairly regularly -- or even on dem…

Yahoo "had" plenty of own expertise - they created Hadoop afterall and used it for their own search engine. Until they closed it around 2010 for a deal with Microsoft Bing.

DuckDuckGo uses Yahoo BOSS search API (closed down for everyone but DDG nowadays) which relies on the Bing search engine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search_BOSS

If Yahoo hosts the BOSS API on their servers or in on Microsoft servers as part of their deal, isn't known. As DDG recently started to provide the search results from a Yahoo sub-domain (and from Yahoo (or Microsoft?) data centers) to minimize the huge latency (that everyone hates) a little bit.

"To get access to the most relevant Yahoo technology, due to contractual obligations that call has to be associated with a Yahoo domain, in this case, duckduckgo-owned-server.yahoo.net." Of course they mention only the first part, as Yahoo itself relies on the Microsoft contract to access Bing search directly.

See: https://duck.co/help/results/yahoo-technical-implementation and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search

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