Google is the leading search engine by some distance. That probably convinced Microsoft that Bing needed some enhancements to close the gap. Consequently, the software giant revamped Bing’s video search last year. With that revamp Bing certainly has better video tools than Google.
If you need more convincing results, select Videos in Bing and then enter a query. The first thing to note is that the Bing video search uses the whole page. Video thumbnails are spread out across the entire search page and are not just listed in one linear list. Consequently, what it now has is a grid of video thumbnails, not just one linear list.
Another thing to note is that the video thumbnails are also expanded. They are more than double the size of the thumbnails shown on Google’s search list. So that makes the thumbnails much clearer in Bing.
Hover the cursor over one of Bing’s video thumbnails. That will play a brief preview of the video if it has one. Google’s video search has no such previews.
Another great thing about the Bing video search is the filters it has at the top. At the top of the video thumbnails, there are filters for length, date, resolution and source. So if you want to find videos with higher resolution, you can click Resolution and select a higher resolution setting from the drop-down list. Alternatively, if you’re only looking for YouTube videos, click Source and choose that.
Yes, Google has search filters, but Bing’s filters are better. For example, you can only select a High-Quality video option from the Any Quality filter in Google. In Bing, you can select various resolution settings. Plus, Bing’s video search has more filters than Google.
Another thing to note is the keywords Bing video search includes at the top. For example, if you enter a song title you can then select a lyric keyword listed at the top that will find a lyric video for it. When you scroll down the search page, a grey search bar appears at the top with alternative keywords on it.
Bing’s video search also includes two grey bars with thumbnails and keywords in them. One of those bars enables you to refine your search by selecting a more specific keyword from it. Alternatively, you can also select related keywords for other artists from the other grey bar so that you can quickly find other videos.
Google only lists so many videos on its search pages. At the bottom of Google, there are numbers for you to select the next page with. However, Bing has an infinite scroll so that you can keep on scrolling down through the video found without needing to select new pages.
So Bing’s video search is somewhat better than Google’s video search options. It might be enough to convince some that Bing is now a better search engine than Google.
