Bing Challenge: Day 6
Mar
17
Written by:
3/17/2010
In my ongoing quest to put Bing through the wringer, and to see how it compares to my usual preferred search engine, I had some interesting results today. Before I get into that though, I should mention that I have truly been taking this challenge seriously. I have switched my default search engines, and I even search for more things than usual, just to put that much more effort towards my end goal. What’s that goal? Easy. I want to give Bing its fair chance to make me a believer – if it can.
Searching for Technical Assistance
Probably the most common thing I use any search engine for is to look for assistance to technical issues I am having. This is common. While it really is more fun and beneficial to figure out the answer on my own – I simply don’t have that kind of time anymore. So, one of my first steps to solve a technical issue that I don’t know the answer to is to jump on a search engine and see if anyone else has asked the same question I have, and what their resolution was.
Today, my main technical issue revolved around an upgrade I am applying to 20+ modules and 4 skins that are using the Telerik control suite. This implementation of the popular control suite is more than a few versions old. However, throughout my project, I am getting the following error:
Request for the permission of type ‘System.Web.AspNetHostingPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089’ failed.
I was running in circles looking for the cause of this error. So, like a a true “expert,” I turned to my resources to find the answer. :)
I went to Bing first of course. I used a pretty standard search engine query style that I have come to use to find all of my answers successfully over time. Here is my search:
telerik Request for the permission of type ‘System.Web.AspNetHostingPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089’ failed.
As you can easily see, I just searched for the error message I encountered with the technology prepended to the query terms. Unfortunately, Bing didn’t like that. It instead seemed more content with ignoring the fact that I was concerned about Telerik altogether. None of the results on the first page pertain to Telerik at all. Not good…
Putting the same query into Google proved to do the exact opposite. The very first result was from the Telerik website itself. While not all of the results on the page pertained to Telerik specifically, there were many more than on Bing.
I could not help but think while this was happening that with Bing being marketed as a “decision engine” that it made the decision for me what I was looking for instead of passing what I really expected back to me.
2 comment(s) so far...
Re: Bing Challenge: Day 6
So I just tried the Bing v Google using the same search but with the addition of two words following 'Telekik', namely 'control' and 'suite'
Telerik control suite Request for the permission of type ‘System.Web.AspNetHostingPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089’ failed
Here, I didn't see telerik on Google till the 3rd page and nothing from dotnetnuke's forums until the 2nd page, but on Bing, Telerik was the 3rd item on the 1st page and there were also 2 dotnetnuke refereneces on the first page.
I don't know how significant this is, or whether your posting above has already had an influence on both engines's output (something like Heisenberg's principle of the quantum search engine?)
The great thing is we can use them both or any number of others anytime we are dissatisfied with the previous result set.
By Richard Burr on
3/18/2010
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Re: Bing Challenge: Day 6
Great point on using either browser. During my testing, I have been using a single search pattern that I have learned to use over time to get the kind of results I expect. In this case, you searched slightly differently. You added extra terms to add additional context to the query. However, I find that to be quite redundant. With the level of talented people behind both search engines, the error itself should have provided enough context to zero in on appropriate results when combined with "telerik" versus "telerik control suite."
By Will on
3/18/2010
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