Andre Yoskowitz
17 Sep 2013 21:12
Microsoft has refreshed its Bing search engine, giving the design an overhaul, all the way down to its logo.
Lawrence Ripsher, Bing general manager of user experiences, says the new look shows that Bing is "no longer just a search engine on a web page," but an experience that integrates as part of Microsoft's new "One Microsoft" strategy to unify all of its brands.
Among the new features are "Page Zero" which is a beefed-up version of the auto-fill suggestions well known by all search engine users. Says the company: "We are introducing Page Zero, a new function in Bing that helps a user get an answer or take an action before they even seethe first results page. We do this by showing key tasks associated with the query while they're typing. This not only provides important information and services to them quickly, but enables them to see what kinds of things they can explore on Bing and across the Web. For example, if you type Katy Perry, we understand what you're looking for before you've even searched and give you a quick glance of who she is and suggest other popular search tasks associated with the singer."
"Pole Position" is another new, notable feature. Explains MSFT: "In search, there are a lot of queries that have multiple or ambiguous intents. For example, someone querying "temple" might want information about the religious structure, Temple University in PA or the subway station in London by the same name. We address these scenarios in a number of ways, such as the earlier mentioned intent disambiguation.
However, we often also receive "high-confidence" queries – searches for which we have very clear data about what someone is looking for due to our work to understand search intent using advanced machine learning. We're now introducing a new surface area at the top of the page called "Pole Position" for results where we have high confidence on a user's intent."