I have been trying Google’s +1 for the last few days. Not surprisingly I also tried Bing’s search to compare it against Google’s to see who offers a better social search experience.

On the surface, Google’s +1 seems like a smart move: While it is not meant to counter Facebook or Twitter the way Buzz was supposed to, it is clearly a direct response to Facebook’s Likes, which, in addition to Facebook itself, can be found on several third party sites. Google’s +1 also has an added advantage of showing up in Google ads thus potentially further strengthening its advertising ecosystem.

While Facebook would soon counter that move with its launch of Facebook ads network (very similar in nature to Google’s), which would inherent Facebook Likes and thus compete with Google’s +1 head to head, it will be a while before Facebook can launch a competing search engine to Google’s. But wait — Facebook already has a search engine in shape of Facebook-Bing partnership.

This is exactly why I conducted a few searches via Bing and Google to compare the results. While my sample is not big enough to conclusively take a side, I am a bit baffled why Bing/Facebook social search is not showing me Facebook Likes in the results. Isn’t this what Bing’s social search was supposed to do after all?

Apart from the fact that Bing’s indexing is generally lackluster when compared to Google’s, it isn’t showing me social results. On the other hand, Google, which arguably does not have the kind of access to Facebook that Bing does, shows me better social results, partly owing to its access to several other networks such as Twitter and soon to be partners Quora and Flickr.