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Bing Fail
- Thread starter Batten
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Because the search was for "why is microsoft office so expensive".
The problem is people don't understand how the search terms are used. It searches for results with those words in any order. Looking at the results, those words are on the page.
If you want the exact phrase(s), you need to put them in double quotes.
Sure, but we don't actually want the exact phrase (syntax), we want the meaning of the phrase (semantics).
Anyway, I wonder if this example is either fake or old. I tried the same phrase in Google and Bing, and neither of them fail. There wasn't an obvious way to see when the picture was uploaded or anything to show when it was done.
hmm does not repeat in the US. I had to switch my setting to UK to get any hope of repeating.
It was how it was typed in. I do smell something off on it though.
It was how it was typed in. I do smell something off on it though.
@jpyc7
fair shout, i tried this with american proxy and you do get a different result. Hopefully attached pic proves legitimacy, this was searched for today and result is the same. I just thought it was interesting that this comes as the top hit. I don't know much about how search engines work but seeing as the lower results are all seemingly much more relevant... I accept that it is completely possible that this is a result of the programming working in an unbiased fashion (in which case it confirms my suspicion that bing isn't a very good search engine) but the alternative is that Microsoft are deliberately corrupting search results in an attempt to portray their competitors in a negative light.
fair shout, i tried this with american proxy and you do get a different result. Hopefully attached pic proves legitimacy, this was searched for today and result is the same. I just thought it was interesting that this comes as the top hit. I don't know much about how search engines work but seeing as the lower results are all seemingly much more relevant... I accept that it is completely possible that this is a result of the programming working in an unbiased fashion (in which case it confirms my suspicion that bing isn't a very good search engine) but the alternative is that Microsoft are deliberately corrupting search results in an attempt to portray their competitors in a negative light.
I didn't know where the picture came from and just assumed you had seen a mention on another blog and posted a link to its picture. I'm not savvy enough to use proxies to switch my country, but I accept your claim of legitimacy.
I think this means that UK people are much more worried about the expense of Macintosh computers.
Not surprising considering that there is a lot of griping about how Apple prices them over there. There was a main page news item on MacRumors recently about how Steve Jobs said that taxes were to blame.The pictures are both screen grabs off my computer from today and yesterday. You might be right about the higher concern for pricing but it's not something that seems to be a massive issue here (I live in London). Jobs is right about the taxes being to blame. The increase in price is roughly 20% across the board when you compare prices for Apple products in the UK and the USA but that is including VAT at 17.5% whereas, if I understand correctly, the prices on the US website do not include local sales tax. This means that by comparing the online apple stores there appears to be a large price difference between UK and US apple products but if you look at the UK prices exclusive of VAT they are actually only 1-3% higher than those in the US.
ps Proxies are really easy, i just went to americanproxy.org and typed in the address i wanted to browse to as if I were in america, dead simple.