RSSBing vs. Google face-off, round 2
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published June 2, 2009, 11:35 AM
The way we left things yesterday, we gave Microsoft's newly revamped Bing search engine some moderately tough, everyday search tests, and gave Google the same treatment. After three heats, the score thus far is Bing 2, Google 1, with Bing performing quite admirably in the computer parts shopping department.
Search engines are fairly good for finding something you know you're searching for. In the real world, folks don't often know what or who it is they're searching for, which is why they're searching for him. So suppose someone sends you out on the Internet to find...
That guy from that old movie
You know the guy I'm talking about. What's-his-name. The guy with the big chin, from that movie you like that had the girl in it. Kind of rugged. Looks a little like Scott Bakula. Not William Holden.
The most obvious deficiency search engines have today is that they gather no collective context about images, and people don't always remember names. With Google, Bing, and all the other major search engines, the only context their indexes can gather about images comes from the text in the immediate vicinity of the Web pages where those images reside. Now, hopefully those images have captions, and those captions include the basic information about who's in the photograph. That's helpful if you're specifically looking for a picture of, say, William Holden.
But what about a fellow whose name not only escapes you, but one where the only information you have is given to you by someone else who's trying to remember the name? All you know is what they're giving you -- that guy from the 1960s who was the lead actor in something-or-rather, I think it's science fiction.
For this test, we came up with a real-world-like query that may not be the most efficient, but one which a regular user is likely to enter: actor 1960s "science fiction" movie lead. If you search Bing's and Google's Images based on just something this general, you'll never find the guy, and you'll be there forever. Google will show you pictures featuring Burt Lancaster (did he ever do sci-fi?), Edward James Olmos (not 1960s), Keanu Reaves, some guy named Shatner, Sidney Poitier, Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, and "Susan" from Monsters vs. Aliens. And that's just among the entries that make sense; you'll also find this black-and-white photo of a 1960s mobile TV signal detector -- a giant radar dish that the British Government once used to detect unlicensed receivers of public TV signals. Interesting, but not even close.
Meanwhile, Bing pulled up some movie posters featuring Jayne Mansfield (nice, but not close either), Clint Eastwood in the French edition of For a Few Dollars More, Gary Dourdan from CSI, the Grinch, and Godzilla. In a case such as this, you'd have to press your source for one more bit of information.
So here's where we threw both Google and Bing a bone: Suppose your source tells you, "I think it was some bird movie." Now, a fan of great films of the 1960s wouldn't have to type anything more at this point -- she'd say, "Oh, you mean The Birds, the Hitchcock film with Tippi Hedren? You must mean Rod Taylor." Assuming you're not that lucky, or your memory for names is more like...well, mine, we'll throw in the term bird into our search query.
Bird is the term that should be the dead giveaway; it's the difference between a query that could be a one-in-a-million shot and one that should have a respectable chance of giving you a clue. It's with this addition that Bing pulled up a fan-made poster from the new Star Trek movie, Charles de Gaulle, Steve Martin from Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Johnny Depp, and whatever unfortunate pairing of persons appears in the fourth photo on the second row. If you scroll down this page, you'll be just as baffled with the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, a former friend of former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, Katie Couric, Shirley Temple, and a Coca-Cola bottle.
Add the giveaway term to Google's query, and you'll see a few closer hits and some further-off misses. Doggone if that's not a clip from The Birds, first photo on the second row, albeit not with Rod Taylor. You'll also find a picture of a '60s sci-fi actor named Bruce Connor, whose obituary happens to share the same Web page as that of actress Suzanne Pleshette, who also starred in The Birds (and who remains greatly missed). And there's also the much-missed Ricardo Montalban ("Kh-a-a-a-n!"), the much-envied George Clooney, and a picture of a small duck probably taken sometime in the 1960s.
If Tippi Hedren's face didn't clue you in, you probably wouldn't know to search further along that same thread to locate Rod Taylor. So it's at this point where we toss the query back to the textual search engine for any kind of help whatsoever. And it's here where you come to realize Google's true strength. Now, we've already determined that textual context used to sort photos is worthless on both counts. But both search engines should be capable of gleaning a collective context from a six-element query, rather than just throw pattern matches onto the screen like photos of ducks and Godzilla, to see what sticks. Item #1 in Google's search results is an AbsoluteAstronomy.com article about -- bingo! -- Rod Taylor.
Meanwhile, with the very same query on Bing, Rod Taylor appeared nowhere within the first 150 results obtained. Let's face it, only Tom's Hardware readers are the sort who'll follow through to page 15 of anything online. Thus in this heat, it's one more point -- albeit a very small one -- for Google, bringing our score thus far to Bing 2, Google 2.
Why doesn't the author use his brain a little. Instead of using every clue that your "friend" gives, try using the most important clues, 1960s movie and bird. I bet your image search using Bing will turn up a movie poster for "The Birds" as your first result and Rod Taylor is listed on it as the lead actor. http://www.bing.com/imag...ird+movie&form=QBIR#
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|i want to receive some of your movies in my E-mail address
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|Wow. Your article made me want to give microsoft a chance again. So I typed into Bing: "700 church street SF CA."
The results were ridiculous. Then I thought, maybe I need to click the "maps" link, since "web" was the default. At least then a few suggested locations were in California, though not in SF.
Google, however, returns with the correct map on top whether I am in "maps" or "web" or whatever.
Is it really too much to expect Microsoft to get that an address in front of SF means San Francisco? Google doesn't even need the "CA" clue. I guess I'll give Bing a few more tries but it still blows my mind how far behind they are.
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|He is not 'some guy named Shatner', he is William Shatner. He played Kirk in Star Trek the television series and more recently playing Denny Crane on Boston Legal. I just felt like pointing out.
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|I took that as a joke. I think everyone knows who 'Shatner' is...
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|do you get out much?
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|Ummm...
A search on IMDB for Rod Taylor instantly returns a basic bio and filmography, including seven still shots from Alfred Hitchc o c k's "The Birds". It also tells me that he was born in 1930, is still alive, AND...will be appearing in the new Quentin Tarantino film scheduled for release in August where he will be playing the part of Winston Churchill.
Using this as a starting point, finding more images of him are relatively simple.
BTW...Does anybody here remember his starring role in the movie version of H.G. Wells' "Time Machine" ??
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|"A search on IMDB for Rod Taylor"
The point being that they didn't know the actor's name...
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|Ummm...
I think you just missed the whole point of the article; not enough that the search terms used are in bold?
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|You're right. My bad.
I should just put down the mouse and step away from the computer after midnight.
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|Please chalk another BIG one up for Bing (idea for round 3):
Search Google and Bing for a zip code for a particular city...
e.g. Philadelphia, PA
http://www.google.com/se...hiladelphia+pa+zip+code
http://www.bing.com/sear...a+zip+code&filt=all
Google results are all over the place.
Bing gives you the zip code from the USPS above all results similar to Google Calculator gives you a result for an inserted mathematical operation.
Bing 1,000,000, Google 2....it is soooo huge. I use zip code search all the time and Google is so disappointing!
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|"Google results are all over the place"
what does it matter? the answer to your query can be found in the first two google result links ... why would you need more?
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|actually, the number one hit on Google for "actor 1960s "science fiction" bird movie lead" IS THIS PAGE WE ARE ALL READING.
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|IMAGE search.
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|If you just put in "Bird Movie", Rod Taylor appears as a related search on bing.
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|To be honest i have no freakin clue what they were trying to find. Rod Taylor?
Also like the guy before me said. You have to narrow down the search. You can't just fly into Google and say oh well i'm looking for the grey guy that played in 1960 with birds. Or something.
It would be a lot easier to find a list of ALL sci fi movies released in 1960, if possible limit the search to lets say USA only and after you narrow down the list you check the movie names. At least my long term memory is excellent and if something looks familiar i'd check it out. There is also a way to look with more specific associations other than "bird" that is so generic you'll get all the crap served by the search engine. It's like searching for term "car" and expecting search engine to throw out "Lexus" specifically as the first link. It just won't work that way.
If you want to do all the search from one search engine you have to learn and master advanced "syntaxes" like what words to include, whhat to exclude, which words you mean in general and which ones you mean literally. So you can filter out all "star trek" results from the beginning and search for more specific things instead very wide ones.
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|The birds, science fiction? Really? Mystery or thriller are better terms to define it, as it has no robots, space odysseys or laser guns. If I were the search engine, I would give you a big "F" for uterlly misleading search criteria.
Edit: For the record, I changed science fiction for thriller in Bing, and lo and behold. First hit has none other than Rod Taylor... and pretty much the rest of the hits are either related to The Birds, or Alfred Hitchc0ck biographies.
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|good point, but again, I think the main issue here is image search.
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|This is stupid. The way the author goes about searching is completely backwards. First, the user should use the main search engine to search for a better movie resource. IMBD would certainly come up and then the movie name will come up and after clicking you get the cast (and pictures). Now that you have the actors name you can go back to the image google or bing image search to find pictures (if the ones from IMDB aren't good enough). Even using the regular search engine, not the image search, would be much better to find the movie and cast and once you have that, move on to the image search. There is no point in searching the image search the way the author does and anyone who actually does that does not understand how to search.
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|I(MDB is going to give you better results with "actor 1960s "science fiction" movie lead"??
You're kidding, right?
Even with "bird" in there, I doubt you'd get far. (Try: "No Matches")
The entire point of this "query" was to see how it handled vague descriptions....which it succeeded at.
The majority of users don't understand *how* to search. If they are looking for an image, they are going to use image search. Period. The same way they type fraking URLs into the search-bar, FFS.
Of course there are better ways to search, but that completely misses the point of the article.
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|Fair comments, scp443. And you're right, I went about this completely backwards. But here's the point: Neither Google nor Bing will have instruction manuals that more than 1% of the general public will ever read. Folks will enter searches kinda sporadically, with bits and pieces thrown together -- mashups of queries rather than well-formed phrases. Any search engine can respond well to a well-formed phrase, but how about one whose user is a person who might, on the word of someone else standing over his shoulder, inadvertently categorize The Birds as a sci-fi film?
Great automobiles are designed for people who are clueless as to how to drive.
-SF "Can Portray a Clueless Person at the Drop of a Hat" 3
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|If someone categorizes the Birds as a sci-fi film, then they probably have not watched the movie, and more than likely will not know the actor either.
I know you want to simulate a "clueless" user, but quite frankly, I think you are trying too hard and looking for searches that are too obscure. In all honesty, if the person is that clueless, then more than likely the person will not watch Hitchc0ck movies.
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|"-SF "Can Portray a Clueless Person at the Drop of a Hat" 3"
...it's gotta be the years of experience under your belt... ;->
Sorry, couldn't resist. (Can't believe I missed that until now)
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|AbsoluteAstronomy.com is just a mirror of Wikipedia, for the record.
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|Made the switch. Still using Google search from my homepage, but have set my Firefox search-field to "Bingle", the mashup linked to in "round 1".
It's a great way to do a little result testing of my own.So far, Google is still outrunning Bing based solely on the way I search, so obviously YMMV...
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|^^
link to what PC_Tool's talking about:
http://bingle.pwnij.com
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|yay XSS exploits!
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|lol, yup
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|Opera 10 supported OOB. Just used the same method as FF(the part after downloading the extension).
Nice.
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