By Michael Dorausch, D.C.
Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, launched earlier this week, to much expected fanfare and commotion. Topics like usability and accuracy of results, are things people are reporting on related to Bing, and I decided to check out some of the features for myself. Like anybody that spends a good part of their day studying search engines and the traffic they bring, I suppose I’m kind of biased and have particular expectations when performing search queries for keywords that are well known to me. The natural choice after searching my name, was to search chiropractic.
First impression? I really like the layout and richness of color seen in Microsoft’s Bing. I like how the graphics change on the main page, and I like the clean explore links for images, videos, shopping, news, maps and travel along the left sidebar. I won’t say that it will become my new choice for primary search engines, but the first impression was good enough to make it onto my bookmark tab, which features only eight other websites.
I’m not getting into details here on too much regarding Bing specifically, there’s plenty of articles that have done that already, including a good one from Rafe Needleman at CNET Webware. What I have done instead is take two different screenshots for searches related to chiropractic, that I’m sharing below. The first one is for a straight text search for the term chiropractic (although Microsoft’s Bing by default was prepared to fill in the search box with the term chiropractor).
photo: Microsoft Bing Screenshot – All Results for Chiropractic
The above screenshot shows all results for the search term Chiropractic. About 6,890,000 results are apparently indexed, and five appear in the screen capture shown above. The first result features an image and an introductory paragraph, which is an indexed article appearing on a US government website. The remaining four results are typical for what I often see related to chiropractic searches. There are results from Wikipedia, the International Chiropractors Association, a fact sheet from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and results for Planet Chiropractic. Right about now you may be thinking “these results stink, where’s the search results for my chiropractor website?” We all know, not every site gets listed at the top, but we can learn tips and techniques from the ones that are.
I’m obviously biased regarding the results, although I genuinely think Microsoft Bing did a pretty good job getting it right. These results are no doubt going to change over the weeks, months and years to come. I’m not getting into chiropractic traffic reports or keyword related URLs here, that’s another discussion entirely. There is also sponsored advertising appearing on the page (which I deleted from the screenshot) which allows nearly anybody to buy themselves into a top position on this new search platform.
As I mentioned earlier, something I really like about Bing’s preview, is the information showing up in the left sidebar. In the case of the above screenshot, Bing offers related searches such as Chiropractic Care, Chiropractic Education, Chiropractic Clinics, Chiropractic Techniques, Chiropractic Salary, Chiropractic School, and Chiropractic Medicine. That last search term undoubtedly ruffles a few feathers, on both sides of the healthcare fence, but it is what it is. Bing also returns my search history in the left side lower browser window, in this case showing the terms chiropractic and chiropractor. Let’s take a look at search results after clicking on one of those tabs.
photo: Bing Chiropractic Image Search – Screen Grab
Along the left sidebar were selections to view things other than the standard text results appearing on the screen. This isn’t specific to chiropractic search, it’s something Bing offers for all searches being performed. I clicked on the images tab and captured the screenshot of what appeared on my LCD. I really like the related searches offered up on the left-hand side. In this case (searching chiropractic images) related searches included terms like chiropractor, back pain, acupuncture, subluxation, reflexology, massage therapy and spine.
The image results came from a number of websites, and I didn’t see any particular preference for any one site, which provides an excellent opportunity for chiropractors (or anybody that wants to rank for chiropractic photos). There were several images showing spinal columns, a few images of chiropractic adjusting tables, a chiropractic logo or two, and quite a few photos of chiropractors demonstrating adjusting techniques. There’s a photo of me on the first page of results, and it’s a high-quality and colorful image. There are some other options when doing image searches, like selecting size, layout, color, style, or other features. I didn’t search beyond the first page, but we’ll likely hit up more detailed image searches, video searches and text searches in the future.
Overall I am pretty pleased with the initial findings seen on Microsoft’s Bing; be sure to check it out for yourself.
planetc1.com-news @ 10:43 pm | Article ID: 1244094205
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