With all the hoopla surrounding Microsoft’s Bing introduction over the last few months, Google has been recently flexing their muscles as well, letting the surfing community know that they are still relevant. Actually, everyone knows that Google is quite relevant, but you can surely bet, that they want to continue to be the top dog and continue to have the momentum of being the search engine brand that is most innovative.
Google has continually been perceived over its relatively short existence as the media’s sweetheart by constantly creating innovative, interesting and sometimes more effective ways to search the web. However, now with MS’s Bing actively (and aggressively) trying to steal market share from Google, the spotlight now doesn’t shine as bright on Google as in the past. But, Google is determined to keep the spotlight, on itself and to be honest; the competition between these two corporate behemoths should reap many rewards, many of which will benefit the casual along with advanced search engine user.
Here are just some of the ways that both search engines (Google & Bing) are competing with one another, which will hopefully bring a better search experience to the web community.
Bing’s Visual Search Function
With the recent release of Microsoft’s Bing, many users and critics have been equally impressed by the relevance of the results, the comprehensiveness of their search engine and the many bells and whistles that add value not only to ordinary web surfers, but for those that require powerful tools for advanced search queries. Microsoft Bing is widely viewed as a high quality search engine, and while maybe not on par with Google - it does offer enough to give Google a run for its money. While there are a wide range of features (which I discussed in my previous MS Bing article), recently as the search engine wars have heated up, Bing has released its Visual Search tool.
Visual Search
While most people are used to searching for items or information by simply typing in select keywords, searching visually has always been a dream of many. For those that are looking for certain images and information that matches these images, searching contextually can take time and be frustrating. However, with Bing’s Visual Search, this task has just gotten much easier.
How Visual Search Works
Visual search is definitely an innovative way to search and it is a welcome addition to the surfer’s search tool box. Using Bing’s Visual Search is quite easy. You visit their main Visual Search page: www.bing.com/visualsearch and you will find that you can enter a keyword into a search box. Many articles that I have read about Visual Search use the example of someone searching for a breed of dog using an image. So for instance, one would enter the keywords “dog breed” into the search box and click enter.
Now is where the fun begins, Bing’s Visual Search returns the results of images that are interactive and highly intuitive. A huge gallery of images that are categorized by breed is now available and by hovering over each image with your mouse or by using the sort functions on the side of the page, one can easily view and search a wide range of dog breeds visually with ease. It should be noted that currently there are over 100 visual galleries available at Bing and you can be sure that there will be more to come in the future.
Google Fast Flip
While Bing has recently announced its Visual Search, Google also has been creating waves with its new product- Fast Flip. While Fast Flip is still in its experimental stage, currently part of Google Labs, it is interesting to see the many products that Google puts out there in order to test the waters. This product is no exception. While Google already has its wildly popular Google News and Google Reader, the new Fast Flip, does offers something a little bit different than these other two services.
Google has received plenty of flack from many publishers regarding its Google News service. The issue mainly is that those that use Google News to browse headlines (effectively reading about a paragraph or less of content) sometimes don’t visit the publisher’s site (resulting in lower revenue for publishers). With Fast Flip, Google is trying to offer a possible incentive (along with making a profit) from those surfers that like to browse headlines or stories.
For instance, you can visit the main page for Fast Flip at http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/ and you will see the general layout which looks like several rows of images of a front page or main article of a newspaper or magazine. Google has made it quite easy to browse many of the top stories or pieces of news, plus you can even search using keywords in the search box at the top. In addition, you can also rank your results by most recent, most popular, recommended, headlines and more. From my experience browsing the many images, it looks like Google is trying to deliver in-depth articles and coverage of news issues instead of the breaking news type snippets currently offered on Google News. Once you flipped through the results, you can easily click on any of the images and you will be sent to the homepage of the article or headline.
Currently, Fast Flip is in its test phase and consists of 39 print and online publishers. Some of these publishers include The New York Times, NewsWeek and several popular blogs. Google believes the benefits of this service will allow those that like to browse or scan many of the major news organizations and magazines to enjoy a more efficient experience. For many, it might seem as though they are flipping through a magazine instead of clicking through web pages.
Visual Search, Fast Flip and SEO
While these two products offered by MS and Google are in their early stages, they can prove highly successful and affect the SEO industry. For instance, as Bing’s Visual Search gallery grows in categories, more and more people will experience and seek out visual search tools, obviously optimized images can play a part, as for Google’s Fast Flip, it is really too early to tell whether this will have any affect on the way in which many choose to search for news and information. Right now, the testing phase consists of only 39 publishers- and in some respects it has a lot to do with driving revenue rather than offering relevant search tools to the public, however if this type of search does become popular and Google opens it up to a wide range of publishers, it may definitely grab the interest of the SEO industry.