Bing beats Google in finding me first PDC09 breakfast
It’s a coincidence I’ve been so Bing-oriented lately, but there will be other topics soon enough. Even at the risk of sounding like a Bing fanboy, I’ll post this.
Good morning, LA! It’s 6 am and I haven’t been sleeping for a while now (ten hour jetlag doesn’t really help). So breakfast time is approaching and I consider the option of a breakfast sub from a Subway. Where do I find one? Without thinking about anything technical, I type “subway” in my Firefox’s search bar.
I got much better results than I expected. Remember, Bing is still my default search engine. I don’t usually get much benefit from it, but now that I happen to be in the US, it actually does seem to make a difference. Take a look at this:
Hey… That’s actually pretty useful. First of all, the map zeroes in close enough to my location that it actually provides useful information, and can of course be browsed and zoomed further. The “Similar to this” suggestions to the right are helpful in general, although not really what I need right now, given my yearning for omelet-filled Subs. Nonetheless, I appreciate it.
At this point I want to make it a comparison, so I’ll run the same by Google.
Not bad either – the thing I was looking for was the first, and there’s a restaurant locator link at the top. Unfortunately the Subway’s locator doesn’t plot the restaurants on a map, so using it is quite a chore. So, essentially, Google left me without a map.
This is particularly undesirable, given that Google actually has the information: If I explicitly do a maps search for “subway los angeles”, I get quite excellent results. It’s just that they aren’t where I’d like them to be, and that’s pretty much everything that really matters at this point. Bing’s ability to combine my IP address and a few educated guesses really made a difference this time.
P.S.: Also note that Google has three times the amount of results Bing has. That is a good thing in itself, but as we can see, it’s a very useless metric if the results don’t contain what you need.
November 15, 2009
· 
Jouni Heikniemi · 
5 Comments
Tags: Bing, Google, maps, PDC09, search · Posted in: Web
5 Responses
Sami Poimala - November 15, 2009
This works, if you remember to change your locale to united states.
Jouni Heikniemi - November 15, 2009
Yes, you need that. Of course, if you reside in the US, you probably have the correct locale already.
Oh and by the way, the double bacon sub was good.
LenardG - November 17, 2009
Double bacon .. doh
You're enjoying healthy food I see :)
Arttu - November 18, 2009
Do you Jouni know any good blog to follow PDC announcements?
Jouni Heikniemi - November 19, 2009
Arttu, unfortunately I haven't had much time to track blogs. Following tweets on #pdc09 is a good way, but requires lots of effort. My newest blog post < http://www.heikniemi.net/hardcoded/2009/11/summary-of-pdc09-announcements/> pretty much sums things up on a general level, though.
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