Bing and Dynamics NAV
15th June 2009
As some of you know MS has released new and rebranded search engine Bing. I really like their instant video search. The search results were pretty good. I search for VARIABLEACTIVE, and it showed MSDN documentation and that it no longer is supported in NAV 2009. Google displayed also Mibuso thread that was a few days old. Searching for VARIABLEACTIVE mibuso showed the thread but would take me to the list of threads and not to the actual thread posting.
I tried to search for Dynamics and Bing automatically suggested search option. Here is a screenshot. Is anything wrong with the picture? Of course there is. There is no Dynamics NAV suggestion.
So I searched for Dynamics NAV and the results show MS website and details about NAV.
Notice that related Search has Dynamics GP. Next I tried to search for Dynamics GP and notice the Related Searches on left. I wonder if Bing is telling us something.
I’m sure a lot of research has gone into algorithms to find what the users are looking for. I am wondering if search engines use and monitor people using them.
For example, if 1000 people search for same word and they all click on the 3rd link, maybe that link is more relevant than the first 2. Or if they stop searching after they click on certain link. I’m sure this is not exact science, and companies/users could abuse it but for forums website where people are searching for solutions, this could help a lot. I’m sure they are researching how people are using the results. I know I do when I write programs for Nav users. I usually watch them and see how they use what I have built, and get ideas on how to make the process for them more efficient.
Overall I think Bing another option for search engines. I use firefox as default browser, and by default it opens to blank page, but after seeing the beautiful daily pictures, I’ve change bing as my default startup page. I suggest to try it for a week and see if you like it.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Hi Rashed,
I didn’t read this blog until I already posted by own blog about How Microsoft is Killing Navision. But your findings only confirm what I’m saying in my blog. It has nothing to do with the fact that Microsoft owns Bing, because you’ll get basically the same results on Google. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a huge science in it self, and Microsoft is actually doing a good job at it, because that Dynamics NAV page from Microsoft comes up also if you search for Navision.
But I think the reason why Dynamics NAV is not coming up is simply that not enough people have been searching for Dynamics NAV before. Do the same trick with Navision and you’ll see that many suggestions comes up for Navision.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Great - finally after 3 tries it was finally possible to post by commnet!
June 19th, 2009 at 4:48 am
Double the price and change the name twice - that is sure way for Microsoft to kill its investment.
Maybe they could start Project Blue where all the product lines are confused and the solution centers all feel the blues.
June 21st, 2009 at 10:36 pm
I suspect that what you are experiencing is the way Bing engines work - that it is a due to the heuristics of the search engine and the behavior of other searches that has been used not so much that Microsoft is biased towards one product more than the other. So, if anything, your experience might be an indication of the behavior of the masses. Then again, perhaps this is proving your point, since the behavior of the masses, one might argue, can be traced back directly or indirectly to the behavior of the publisher.