Bing has announced a number of updates to its search engine at SES New York, including changes to the way that query intent is determined and catered for and the addition of FourSquare information via a new map application.
Microsoft announced a number of updates to its search engine, Bing, at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference held in New York this week. The Bing Search Blog also announced the updates, and included information as to why they were needed, summing up the impetus for the updates by saying:
“Our focus remains consistent – we want Bing to be the best place to help you make better decisions. When we launched last June, one of the ways we helped customers get to better decisions was by providing a more visual, more intuitive, and more organized experience. This spring we will continue this evolution by making some changes to our user experience and providing new experiences throughout search.”
The problem, as Bing sees it, is that users don’t always get the results that they want first time. Bing intends to address this by providing richer search results and analysing searches resulting in follow up searches, so that patterns can be identified and used to enhance the relevancy of search results to user intent:
"Our research showed that 42% of sessions require refinements, searching sessions are getting longer, and we see that many of those refinements happen when trying to complete common tasks."
Bing’s response to this is to move and expand its ‘Quick Tabs’ results, these are currently located on the left-hand side of the page, but will be moved to be at the top of the page, as shown in this screen shot.
Although not included in the image above, where Bing identifies (through anonymous user query analysis) a need, the results will also include more information in order to answer queries on the first search, such as answers to queries about celebrities and sports. Results will also include additional pieces of rich information, such as the current most ‘socially’ shared links within a site, as in this screen shot.
In addition to this, Bing previewed an application for it’s mapping platform, which includes data from FourSquare, a popular location-based social networking site.
Bing will also be adding a way to apply filters to search results based on various parameters. The Bing blog concludes by saying:
“You’ll see some of this roll out as we begin our testing, and there is more to come as we move into the spring. We are at the beginning of this journey, and are excited to see what you think. Thanks for using Bing for all your decisions, and keep the feedback coming.”
These changes are all part of the Bing strategy to position themselves as a ‘decision engine’, where people can find the information they need in a straightforward and intuitive manner by augmenting their search results with rich data that answers a query more intelligently than a more traditional search engine.
This is all positive from Bing, and we welcome these changes. Bing’s market share currently stands at 3% in the UK, so whether or not its efforts will result in an increase in market share, although they are taking steps in the right direction, remains to be seen. This, along with the Yahoo search deal now being in place, puts Bing in a strong position and makes them the one to watch.
Web Design London says:
April 4, 2010
Interesting read thanks