Both US search engine giants Google and Yahoo have an advanced search feature. Even micro-blogging platform Twitter has it too for its user-powered real-time search. What about the latest Microsoft’s Bing? Well, the answer is NO! Yes, I must agree that the Redmond-based start-up is pretty impressve with some wonderful features such as video thumbnail preview and an image search with continuous scrolling images results page. I’ve tried out its web search and it offers accurate results. Overall, it’s great but what puzzles me is that it doesn’t even provide an option which gives users a little bit more power to find what they need almost instantly and of course with ease as compared to the basic search.
As a frequent Googler and advanced searcher, I often use Google’s state-of-the-art Advanced Search as it enables me to look for information that I want quickly and more efficiently. Even though I personally find that the baisc search is more than enough for most users, however, sometimes I would get unrelated resulsts. Thus, by adding several tweaks to my search query allows me to tell Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change, search within a specific website or even terms I want to exclude.
Even though only a minority of Internet users worldwide actually use the advanced search feature on a frequent basis, but it plays an important in giving users an impression (especially the advanced searchers) whether or not the search technologies behind a particular engine are good and powerful. Bing is almost perfect in all areas despite some cristisms made by analysts saying that it would become a “flop” in a long term basis.
I know that the folks at Microsoft are racking their brains and working hard to improve users’ search experience by innovating new features everyday. And I’m sure that they will include an advanced search option very soon so as to attract professional searchers to move their hearts to Bing. Will it be better than rivals Google and Yahoo? Well, only time can tell…
Currently, Bing has grabbed around 16% of the search engine market share, edging past Yahoo but still far away from leader Google.