Research is a hobby of mine. Give me a topic and I will spend a lot more time than necessary scrolling through Google and the hundreds of other links I happen to find so I can know everything possible about that topic. I take my Internet very seriously and my search engine of choice is always Google, but when Bing asked me to “Bing It On” I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. The thing is I picked Google over Bing. Bing did not even come close.
Bing It On Fail
At the end of May I was reading an article in Buzzfeed, which I usually take with a grain of salt, but this list caught my attention. Buzzfeed’s Ashley McCollum believes that Pinterest is sometimes a better search engine than Google. Ashley is right, kind of. Pinterest is a really great search engine for alternative options. I use Pinterest for images and ideas all of the time. Google, however, dominates every place else. If I add the word clothes to her search of stripes in Google I get hundreds of thousands of results. The whole process took less than 2 seconds and Google is still King of the Mountain.
Stripes + Clothes = Google is Awesome
To be completely fair to Pinterest I should point out its more masculine competitors, too. Gentlemint was started in November of 2011, and is a place to share manly links. I’ve never used Gentlemint, but I thought I’d put it to the test with my research skills to see if it comes up short or not. Usually I’d search for things like Knitpicks Brava worsted yarn, but I knew Gentlemint would be at a severe disadvantage with a topic like knitting, so I picked a manly topic that I actually know something about, The Tie Bar.
I opened Gentlemint and spent about ten minutes searching for the search box, but came up short. I really did not want to join Gentlemint, but in the name of research I submitted my name and for some crazy reason expected to get an email within 24 hours, but it’s been about seven days and I haven’t heard anything yet. I was able to kind of search Gentlemint through Google by typing in www.Gentlemint.com: The Tie Bar, but these results were still severely disappointing. I was lead to three tacks from Gentlemint, all of which encouraged me to join because there was more inside. Jeesh.
www.submitedge.com/
Manteresting uses virtual nails so their users can nail products and webpages to their workbenches. Very manly indeed. To search Manteresting I did not have to join or attempt to join because there was a big search bar right at the top of the home page. My search for The Tie Bar, however, turned up about 50% nails about ties and 50% nails about alcohol. Not only that, but all the nails are for companies other than The Tie Bar, which was an incredible let down. The Tie Bar is an amazing company and has been profiled in GQ, Men’s Health, Marie Claire, and Lucky, and is worn by such awesome people like Mr. MVP, Neil Patrick Harris, and Jason Bateman.
www.socialmediadelivered.com
I moved over to Pinterest and logged out of my account and quickly realized that in order to search Pinterest you now need an account. Blah. I logged back into my account and searched for The Tie Bar and of course, was completely impressed with the results. I got hundreds of results, all revolving around the company The Tie Bar. These pins either expanded on fashion for men, or were just stating that The Tie Bar is a good company and showing the different products they have to offer like knit ties, bow ties and socks. Pinterest really did an excellent job with this search.
The Tie Bar on Pinterest
Google of course did pretty much the same as Pinterest. Google has a new feature at the top that allows users to chose what exactly they want in their search. For the purposes of my Tie Bar search I was able to decide if I wanted logos, ties, knit ties, Tie Bar ties, or simply The Tie Bar. I picked Tie Bar ties and up popped almost exactly what was on Pinterest. Google is good like that.
The Tie Bar on Google
Unless something really weird happens and Google stops offering searches, I am going to stick with them. For this blog post I used Google for all my extra miscellaneous searches and my blog likes Google. My research is more than just about knowing stuff, it’s about letting other people in on stuff I know about. Most of the time the facts and knowledge I collect aren’t very important, but you never know when someone is going to have a necktie emergency and my brain will be filled with superior information. Thanks Google!
About The Author
Nicole
Member of Team VP, knitter and Mama to Blue and Franks. Life, is bloody good.
