12 Things that Bing Does Better than Google

Relying on Google to search for information is second nature to most of us. Although Bing is a distant second, there are several areas where Bing does indeed do better than Google. Its search is a bit more intuitive, organized, and feature-rich, thanks to a new AI algorithm. If you haven’t searched with Bing yet, we’re supplying the many reasons why you should give it a try.

1. No Captchas

When using Bing as a search engine, you will never encounter a captcha wall, which is a regular problem with Google search. For users who aren’t signed in and those who frequently use Tor/VPN, it’s rather common to run into Google’s unusual traffic detector leading to a captcha wall. Even Android users will face this issue on a third-party browser app.

If you’re tired of proving to Google you’re not a bot, Bing will welcome your excessive searches with open arms. Bing does not flag your search from a VPN/Tor source as suspicious activity, as it has its own built-in settings to change your country and location of search.

2. Less Effort in Image Scrolling

Bing was the first to introduce horizontal image scrolling, which has now been replicated by Google. There are a few differences, though.

Google’s horizontal images open in a side panel which occupies nearly half the screen on your device, allowing you to preview five or six of these images without having to scroll down further. The worst part is that when you click on an image – it first directs you to the host website where you have to scroll down once again to trace where the image is. This defeats the whole purpose of image previews.

With Bing, searching for good images takes considerably less effort. The horizontal scrolling panel occupies the entire screen: it feels like a slideshow. You can quickly return to thumbnail view by clicking the close button on top.

Once you click on an image, you will directly view a full-sized image (in a separate tab) rather than being forced to visit the website first. Bing allows you to quickly view multiple images across different tabs.

3. More Visual Search Options

While Google allows you to “search by image,” it limits you to pasting image URLs or uploading them from your computer. Bing Visual search additionally lets you find similar images, drag them from your desktop or take a photo with your webcam/phone. There’s a prominent visual image search icon in the Bing search box on the website and app homescreen. With Google, this option is not visible on its homepage.

4. Advanced Video Search

If you’ve never tried Bing’s video search engine, it’s time to give it a try. You’ll be surprised at how well-developed the feature is.

All video search results are organized using thumbnails which can be scrolled with horizontal arrow keys. To view the same number of videos on Google’s video search, you will have to scroll much more.

But that’s not where the differences end. You can directly play Bing videos in full-screen mode without having to visit YouTube, Facebook, Hulu, CNN, Fox, or other sites. By comparison, Google will always direct you to YouTube or other sites first.

Bing videos also return superior results to Google video search. It is at least as good as YouTube in terms of algorithmic suggestions, as you just won’t need to visit YouTube unless you want to read the comments.

5. Infographic Search Panels in Results

Bing has recently introduced a new “whole page algorithm,” which converts the entire search results page to an infographic display. There are many rich elements in a search result, such as video boxes, image boxes, and expanded view panels. The dynamic search results page is based on an AI algorithm called Space Partition Tree And Graph (SPTAG), which makes the results faster and more interconnected than before.

These new features don’t reduce the usefulness of the core search results, since the blue hyperlinks are as clearly visible as before. It proves that Bing developers are doing a little more research on modern-day user search habits. Instead of searching by “keyword,” you can now also search by “concept.”

6. My Saves

It’s a whole new experience in search engines, which many people aren’t aware of. Say goodbye to saving bookmarks or favorites. Bing prominently displays a feature called “My Saves,” which allows you to save all search results in one place. If you save “My Interests,” you get search suggestions on your favorite topics of choice. Again, it’s the kind of feature you generally find on YouTube.

7. Additional Privacy Settings

Bing allows you to totally turn off interest-based advertising from “other privacy settings.” While it is well-connected with Windows, Skype, XBox, and Office, you have a clear choice not to use your Microsoft account. As a user, you are in complete control of your privacy.

Unlike Google, Microsoft does not use “content-based targeting,” so your emails, chats, files, and other personal stuff is not tracked for advertising.

Now there’s a new feature in Bing where you can clear your entire search history without even signing in to Microsoft. It’s accessible from the “search history” option. You can view your search history in the activity dashboard without signing in further. You may also disable “show new searches,” which makes your search results discreet and not targeted by advertising.

8. Office 365 Integration

Bing integrates quite well with Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, OneDrive, and Excel. For example, while creating a PowerPoint presentation, you can directly use a Bing search for the keywords. It will immediately fetch search results from Creative Commons, which can be directly inserted in the presentation, the same way you get Bing search options during a Skype chat.

9. Sidebar Search from a Right-Click

Sidebar search in Google is not available from a simple right-click, other than with extensions. This is a drawback when you come across a difficult term, and you have to search for it in a new tab. Bing allows sidebar search with a simple right-click, and the results are immediately visible on a right panel. You can turn off this sidebar very easily. Again, this is based on Microsoft’s new “whole page algorithm” for search indexing.

10. Easy Change of Country and Region

Google’s algorithms detect your location based on your computer settings and IP address. This is very useful in serving you local search recommendations. But it does pin you down to a certain geography, and there is no way to change the search engine results. Of course, you can use a VPN or Google Advanced search for non-local search recommendations.

In contrast, Bing does not constrain you to a specific location and region for searching information. You can easily change your search engine region in the settings. Once you do that, you will receive local search and news recommendations from that region irrespective of your IP address.

11. Opening Links from Search Results in a New Tab/Window

We’ve saved this for next to the last, as this is indeed one of the best features of Bing search. In this, all hyperlinks in a Bing search result page can be directed to launch in a new tab/window. You don’t have to right-click to open in a new tab.

12. Overall Look and Feel

Compared to Google’s spartan interface, Bing feels more colorful and inspirational. The wallpapers are changed frequently. Of course, if you want a more focused interface, you can easily enable it in the “Settings” window. There are also additional themes you can enable on the search engine homepage, and you can even add your own wallpaper.

Main Drawback of Bing vs. Google

Now that we’ve described several advantages of using the Bing search engine, it’s important to discuss its biggest drawback, which is:

Bing is not Google.

In terms of conventional search engine results and accuracy, Bing and other search engines have a long way to go before they can deliver Google-level performance. This means Google still does much better in terms of more search results, more relevant search results, and a better understanding of user intent.

However, with its new whole-page algorithm, it seems Bing is definitely trying to definte itself as a serious player in the search engine business.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Is Bing Safer than Google?

Both Google and Bing are equally safe to use, as a search engine does not serve malware nor carry any notable security risks. However, visiting a non-encrypted website from a search engine may cause many problems. That said, Bing allows you to wipe your search history without signing in to Microsoft, and Google doesn’t have anything similar. This makes Bing slightly more privacy-friendly.

2. Does anyone actually use Bing?

While most people prefer to use Google, the Microsoft search engine is actually a favored Google search alternative in many countries.

For example, in the United States, as of July 2021, Bing commanded a healthy 11.81 percent market share of desktop search engines and 16.29 percent for tablet users. If we add Yahoo to the tally (as it is powered by Bing), that would mean a respectable 16 to 17 percent market share.

Even though all this is way behind Google’s pole position at above 80 percent, there are many advantages of searching with Bing.

Final Thoughts

Personally, I am using Bing much more these days, as I don’t want to deal with captchas. Whenever I have to find an image or video, I find Bing more useful than Google.

However, when it comes to regular search queries, most people prefer the Google search engine over Bing. Other reasons Google will continue to dominate for now include Bing Maps not being as user friendly as Google Maps. However, most operators common with Google are usable in Bing as well.

If you use Google often, learn how to delete your Google search history.