Bing fiascos continue

I really want to like Bing. Really I do. However, they insist on ensuring that I can regard them as nothing more than also rans in the search game. They are *still* censoring UK results - my martin luther king search still gives me this:

I have asked Microsoft several times for a reason for this. They don't know. Imagine that - Bing has NO IDEA why it's giving the results that it is. You don't get this with other versions - it's just the UK version. However Bing does censor results in other countries for different searches. Try the Indian version for example - a search for 'sex' gives us this:

 

Bing is blocking *the entire term*. This ineptitude is astonishing; it's only the most basic and amateur engines that work in this way. Wait though, it gets better - much better. A search for 'penis' also gives no results but 'vagina' returns 131 million results. A search in the Image section for the word 'Adult' gives us the message "The search adult may return explicit adult content." No kidding! However, a search for 'vagina' gives us 39,000 results, and while I've not looked through them in any detail, there certainly seemed to be some adult content. I'm not sure if it's madness, incompetence or stupidity that Microsoft is showing, so let's be generous and say that it's all three.

So, what's the latest disaster that Bing is involved with? Why... none other than Twitter. Bing's got an agreement with Twitter to take their 'firehose' of tweets. First point to make is that if you're using Bing you need to be using the US version, since it doesn't work if you're using a country version. Why is this the case? God knows. Microsoft makes such a big play over the country versions, and for why? If you're in India and you want to see porn, use another country version. If I don't want to see the UK censored results, just use the US version. But still, sense and competence really aren't Microsoft's strong suits are they?

So, let's go to the Bing Twitter site which is http://www.bing.com/twitter. First thing that we see is a tag cloud of hot topics on Twitter. This is NOT the same as the trending topics you see in Twitter - there are differences. So clearly Bing is already doing different things to the data that they're getting. Let's try the Windows 7 search as that's a hot topic of the moment. This is what we get from Bing:

Isn't that '2 minutes ago' a bit worrying? Let's look at the Twitter version that I did a couple of seconds after getting this screenshot:

Half a minute ago. That sounds more sensible to me. Moreover, in the time that it's taken me to edit the images, cut and paste and so on, there are another 376 new tweets over at Twitter.
What have I got over at Bing Twitter?

The SAME results, and I'm kindly told that they're now 7 minutes old. I wouldn't mind that much, but there's a Pause button, so that I don't get overwhelmed with the results from Bing. Refreshing the page brings up new tweets, but once again, they're listed as 2 minutes old. Not acceptable Bing, not by a long shot. Now, to be fair, there is that 'see more Tweets' option, and this does give me more results. Nothing more recent than a minute old however. Within that option there's a 'Most recent' and a 'Best match' choice. I'd love to tell you the difference between the two, but all that I get is this:

It's been 'loading new tweets' for the last few minutes. I've not got this to work ever. Maybe it's just me and my browser - maybe the world doesn't like me, but *it doesn't work*.

OK, let's try something different. I'll try an ego search - they're always fun. A search in Bing for @philbradley returns 1 result - from my sister in law posted about 52 minutes ago. Same search over at Twitter? Dozens of results. Same search over at Brizzly (a different Twitter interface), gives the same as Twitter - dozens of results. This happens over and over again. Twitter finds results, Bing doesn't. Of course, it doesn't help that Bing is throwing away content older than a week. Why? I have no clue. Maybe they can't afford the storage space, maybe they never thought to program it in, maybe they're just clueless. Whatever the reason - Bing's Twitter engine is pointless to use for any type of archival work.

What else can I try and do with this search engine? Going back to the Windows 7 search there's an option to see 'top links shared in tweets' which is kinda handy and it's leading me to the CNN site. I'd prefer something with a little more authority, such as a Microsoft site, but if that's not where people are linking, that's not where they're linking.

Of course, it helps if you know what the link is to. Bing is supposed to break open short URLs to tell you where you're going to be clicking, which is a great idea. It looks something like this:

 
See the (softpedia.com) there? Helpful. However, see the other bit.ly link - the one that they've not broken out? That takes you to a website that's offering some sort of nonsense, and includes pop up boxes and a confusing 'cancel to stay here' kind of message, trying to get me to speak to an 'advisor'. Gee thanks Bing - that's really helpful isn't it. Danny Sullivan found the same thing when he was doing his review of Bing Twitter and I'd suggest you take a look at it, since it's very helpful - according to Bing they told him it was a 'glitch'. Danny found spam, I found something similar, so it's an impressively large glitch.

Look, maybe this is all just me. Maybe I'm just a bit of a bully who doesn't like Microsoft. Let's see what other people think - Karen Blakeman did a review of Bing Twitter recently as well. Her opinion is summed up in her last line: "Bing have yet again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory." Don't take our word for it though - go and take a look for yourself and let me know what you think.

Comments

[Aditya]

I searched on bing for the terms u hav stated, & still finding same error!

But wait.. I searched for Microsoft Fiasco in google & found dis post on 1st page(where it deserves!) bt other dan dat, less posts abt actual MS fiascos...
however, i searched in Bing & bingo! It really gave me very relevant results, i.e. many more microsoft fiascos on top than google results! is dat bad or good?! :-)
again, i didnt find dis post in 1st 10 pages in Bing results, where i left finding for dis post in results! I guess, i want to hav a google search where i can search to extract more exact results from Bing results!