Bing Announces New Search Features

Posted Monday 29th March 2010 by Allison in SEM News.

Bing has announced impending new features in its latest bid to gain search market share.

Bing is going to be testing its new user interface which will include its Quick Tabs functionality moving to the top of the screen in order to better organise the page and improve its aesthetics. Quick Tabs is designed to allow access to subcategories, including news and events, of search queries, and to better clarify user intention.

At the top left of the page, Bing will provide options specific to the user’s query which will assist in search refinement, and there will be comparison answers for sports.

Bing will also display more real-time results features, including the New York Times’ most-shared articles that relate to the user’s search query.

The search engine is also going to be integrating Foursquare data into its maps, which the search engine sees as being as exciting for Bing as it is for Foursquare, and will give its maps an edge on Google’s.

Foursquare is a popular location-based game and will, according to Bing, act as an interactive day planner for users visiting certain locations, as they will be able to zoom into a location to which they are heading and glean tips from locals there about what to see and where to go.

The changes are announced on the back of Bing’s new advertising campaign, and the moves to clarify user intention are in line with its advertised philosophy which promotes Bing as the ‘decision engine’, aiming to demonstrate that it simplifies the overload of information that it claims a certain rival search engine throws up after a search query, and perhaps hinting at intellectual superiority.

Five per cent of Bing users will experience the improvements immediately, with the features rolling out to the rest of users gradually.

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