For some reason, when I view Bing’s search results I feel claustrophobic. When I search with Google’s search engine I feel like I can see more and everything doesn’t look so squashed! A simple right align could fix this on Bing. But, beside for that, I’m pretty impressed with Bing. I’ve decided to search with it for a week to see whether I can live without Google or not. The results are pretty accurate and extremely close to the search results I receive from Google so that is a plus!
Aside from the search engine, or should I say “decision engine”, Microsoft launched Bing travel earlier today and I find it incredibly useful! I will definitely use it to plan my next trip. Bing travel’s goal is to help people make smarter, more informed decisions when it comes to traveling. They aim to reduce the amount of time consumers spend searching for travel information by aggregating results into one place. It is helpful since it uses price prediction a feature acquired from Farecast (Microsoft acquired Farecast in Feb 2008 for  $115 Million),  an algorithm that predicts the best time to purchase an airline ticket based on previous rising and falling prices. It also uses rate indicator, which analyzes rate data from thousands of hotels to determine whether the current price is a good deal or not. This can be seen by a green label indicating a deal, a yellow label indicating an average rate, and a red label indicating a rate over the average room rate of that specified hotel.

If you want to hear more about Bing travel you can listen to episode 4 of the Daily Bit podcast at TechNestReport.com

Also, if you haven’t heard about cashback, it is another awesome feature within the Bing search engine. It allows you to search for products and receive cashback to the account of your choice! This isn’t those silly cashback deals where they trick you into a purchase and then post so much small print that they jipp you in the end. The way Bing cashback works is that you receive money back directly into your paypal, bank account, or by check by mail once you’ve made a purchase through the system (there is a wait period – but you do get it back!).

Here’s how it works:

Lets say we want to get a great deal on a Samsung HZ10W digital camera. All we need to do is search in the shopping section of Bing for samsung HZ10W digital camera, then Bing will give a listing of all the online retail centers that carry this product and will present us with a golden coin icon. This icon indicates wether or not the online store is participating in the Bing cashback promotion. Right next to that little coin, will also be a percantage meter indicating how much you will receive back after purchasing your product with the retailer! You will receive payment after a designated grace period is met. This only ensures that you don’t return the item you purchased from the retailer.

I think this is a great feature and it will definitly grab some attention once more people know about it and undrstand how it works.

Feel free to share you comments about your experience with Bing below!