Microsoft has unveiled a major redesign of its Bing search engine, in an attempt to lure web users away from rival Google
Bing search results now include more
contextual information. A new “Glance” feature combines two existing
features – Snapshot and Sidebar – to provide personalised search results
based on information pulled from the user’s Facebook and Twitter
accounts and other social networks.
Microsoft has also introduced a “Page
Zero” function, that makes it quicker for users to get answers to their
queries. For example, if the user types “Katy Perry”, Bing provides a
quick glance of who she is and suggests other popular search tasks
associated with the singer, before the user has even pressed “search”.
Bing uses “intelligent disambiguation”
to provide a choice of results if there are two similarly named people
or things. It also shows the most common actions on particular websites –
so for an airline company, for example, it would display ‘check in’ and
‘flight status’ options.
Meanwile, a new “pole position” feature
uses advanced machine learning to provide results prominently in cases
where Bing has high confidence that it known what the users is looking
for. These results apprear in a special box at the top of the page, and
will enable users to take an action or dig deeper into that topic.
Microsoft is also keen to provide the
right search experience for the right device. Following recent
improvements to its Bing search experience on the Windows Phone
platfrom, Microsoft is now keen to bring them to all mobile devices.
“The improvements we’re releasing in
this latest release of Bing.com are the beginning of a new, more modern
era for Bing,” said Lawrence Ripsher, General Manager of User
Experiences at Bing.
“We believe this reinvention will give
people faster access to information, more efficient ways to get things
done and a unique and human perspective on search, all delivered through
a beautiful experience.”
-telegraph.co.uk
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