Microsoft Bing: The World's First Search Portal

Image via CrunchBase

I just shared a post on Ad Age's DigitalNext blog showing how Microsoft's new search engine Bing is really a search portal, even if it calls itself a decision engine:

I've spent the last few days trying out a live preview of Bing, and it's much better categorized as a "search portal." The idea of a search engine is to get you where you want to go fast, based on the queries you enter. The idea of a portal is to give you all the content you need so you don't have to go anywhere else. Bing is a hybrid, a search portal that lets you keep searching and refining your query without ever leaving the site until you absolutely have to.

A couple examples are included:

• Search for "30 Rock" on Bing and the first natural link is for NBC.com, but the link below for "videos of 30 rock" brings up the Bing video guide. Almost all listings on the first page come from Hulu and clicking one lets you watch the Hulu episode right on Bing. You can then further refine the search for factors like content length and resolution.
• Search Bing for "asthma" and the first natural result offers a brief description from the Mayo Clinic, with a link to "full article and more." Click that, and the full article appears on Bing. Click to enlarge the first image beside the lengthy article, and you're still on Bing.

Read the post for the whole thing, including other examples, and let me know what you think.

You can also read and watch more Bing coverage on the blog here:

• Bing's image and video search
• My first Bing webcast
• Roundup of comments to the press
• The Bing Bang - first thoughts on the engine