There’s no replacement for good research and preparation, but hunches are just as important in guiding us to the right answer. Microsoft and Flickr's co-founder, Caterina Fake, hope we find a lot of value in hunches in our decision making. I’m left to wonder …Is a hunch enough?

We’ve seen and heard the Bing ads, the ones with people regurgitating search results in everyday conversation. Their hunch is that people are tired of the irrelevant garbage we get back from Google that we’ll turn to a new tool. Is the decision engine a Google killer? My first test was to use my own name as a search term. While the results were ordered differently on Google and Bing, I didn’t feel like one outperformed the other. I filed it away in my head. Since Bing’s launch in May, I mostly forgot about it until I read about Bing’s upward trajectory. Microsoft must be on to something here. My second test came when I was researching a client’s social media outlets. My search term was something like “client name” + “facebook” and Google’s first result was a link to a political event that had nothing to do with what I wanted to find. I tried Bing, and the very first result was exactly what I needed.

What’s the take away? I'd say Bing is a good second choice to Google, but with the Yahoo/Microsoft merger, better things may soon be on the horizon. Meanwhile, give Hunch a shot.