Searching the spring trends
Would you like to know my secrets for knowing what’s trendy? I would like to say it’s just “a hunch” but predicting and claiming what is trending right now takes a lot more work than you think. It’s all about searching and going through a lot of information. In fact, searching for the trends is much more than a guessing game. In any given day I spend a lot of time searching for information online, and following what bloggers and other trendsetters in different countries are doing. I have a Hollywood stylist on a speed dial, and I get press releases from multiple fashion brands. I follow what is presented on the runways, what is worn on the streets and what’s in the fashion boutique windows, all are equally important when you want to know what’s trendy.
I follow, read and stay alert and make my own conclusions and have “hunches” what is up and coming, but on the end of the day when I am writing a larger feature, let’s say “the top spring trends for 2013” it is the search engines that help me the most when putting together a comprehensive trend feature. Even when I know which trends I want to feature, I still want to find out the best products that got the trend spot on, or who is wearing the trend the best.
I admit, I always use Google when searching, but the nice people at Bing asked me if I’d like to take the “Bing It On” challenge and give Bing a try. Let’s see how it goes!
Bing It On Challenge
You have probably seen the Bing it On- TV commercials, and many choosing Bing over Google.
I was interested in doing the test at the
BingItOn.com website, which puts Google and Bing to side-by-side comparison test. The catch – you don’t know which search results are from Google and which one is Bing when you are taking the test!
I typed in “spring fashion trends” and the site asked me which results I liked better, the ones on the left, or the ones on the right. I clicked.
I typed in more detailed “2013 spring fashion trends” and clicked which results I liked better.
Same with “spring shoe trends 2013” and “printed shorts for spring 2013” and “metallics for spring 2013.”
After I had done this 5 times, the BingItOn.com site gave me the results which search I had chosen each time.
Wow! Didn’t see that coming! 4 out of 5 times I had chosen Bing! I was very surprised by the result, and did a few other searches as well. While Google was still coming up as my chosen search engine in many of the searches I did, I was surprised how often Bing actually was on the top.
After seeing this result last week, I decided to put Bing for a better test. I didn’t want just this Bing-owned test site to determine which was better search engine for me, especially because I had been loyal to Google for so many years. After using both Bing and Google for the past week, I realized a few things… I actually did like Bing better for many searches. I am connected to so many people via Google+ circles and other social media networks that Google tends to push me information that it thinks is more relevant to me and comes recommend by the people in my social networks. That’s good – and bad. I also want to see things from non-biased perspective and not recommended by the people in my circles, and did discover many new sites and in a way “fresh” perspective from the Bing results. I don’t think I am ready to abandon Google just yet, but it was great to take a more in-depth look how Bing works for me, and I know I will be checking the search results with Bing as well for now on.
You give it a try too! Try the
Bing It On Challenge yourself and see which results you prefer.
Thank you to
Bing and
Technorati for being sponsors of this article. All opinions expressed here are my own.
* Based on a comparison of web search results panel only; excludes ads, Bing’s Snapshot and Social Search panes and Google’s Knowledge Graph.
Learn about the study.
