When I was a kid growing up in St. Louis I spent many a hot summer day at the Carpenter Branch Library of the St. Louis Public Libraries.  When you are a kid who loves to read, and your parents don’t have air conditioning, the library is a “cool” place in more ways than one!  It was back then when I discovered the power of the card catalog (which was computerized) versus the librarian.  Sure, the card catalog could return a ton of listings on my search query – but it was the librarian who could actually understand what I was trying to find and in what context and then guide me to the material that would be most beneficial to me.  It’s this same model that Microsoft is now using for their newly launched Bing.com search engine.

Bing bills itself as a decision engine and promises to free us from search overload.  I have to admit, I’ve been using it for two days now and so far Microsoft is living up to the promise.  I’m highly impressed at how Bing can focus in on determining what I am asking and trying to give me relevant results instead of just throwing everything in its database at me.

Case in point.  I’ve recently became a very active fitness buff (feel free to come follow my progress over on Nike+) and wanted to pick up a new pair of Nike Shox M1+ running shoes.  I had went to the mall after work and didn’t really see what I wanted, so though OK I would give Bing a try.  Not only did Bing find me the shoes at $20 less than I expected to pay, but it also found them locally at a store I had walked right past in the mall!  Now THAT is relevant results that I can use!

Ok.  So maybe Bing just got lucky.  Time to throw it some curve balls.  I live in a rather small town of about 10,000 in Missouri called Boonville.  Nice place, and a great river town.  We don’t have a whole bunch of restaurants, but we got enough to give us the variety we need – and they are all locally owned for the most part.  I asked Bing to show me the restaurants local to me.  I was impressed when the results came back with not only the restaurants, but pricing and reviews as well.  Cool!

Now of course there are always a few rough edges in any new products, so I have to admit that a few restaurants from nearby Columbia, MO (about 20 miles down the road) snuck in – but hey, to be fair, the same thing happens over on Google as well.

What Bing is doing, and I think doing rather well, is that it is just not throwing back a bunch of results like a typical search engine does and saying “have fun”.  It’s actually trying to narrow down your query and focus in on relevant results that fit the context of what you are searching for.  Just like the librarian at the library, Bing is trying to understand exactly what you are needing and not just throwing back the entire card catalog at you.

I’ve been a Google fan for years because even though it threw back all the results, it threw them back in a manner where at least in the first 20 or so I could find something that was relevant and then go from there.  Now with Bing I’m finding that I’m getting back relevant results on the first try which is really nice.

Has Microsoft finally found their footing in the search engine marketplace?  I think so, and I think in finding their footing they have also reinvented search and coined a new phrase which I predict will be around for a while to come – the decision engine.

Google, Yahoo, Ask and others – meet the new librarian.  It’s name is Bing.

Tags: Bing, decision engine, microsoft, search engines