Bing’s Decision Engine Provides Visual Search

Announced at the TechCrunch 50 conference today, Yusuf Mehi from Microsoft shared with the audience that the next release for Bing will provide a richer search experience.  Microsoft sees Bing being more of a “decision engine” than a “search engine”.  The vision is to provide the best in “first search”, but more so, they want to lead the way with richer and more organized information.

The next round of Bing development is a result of studying users’ search behaviour.  Internet users are becoming more sophisticated with their search queries.  Search users are changing and moving beyond the “keyword to url” mapping search function.  Mehi and his team found that;

• 25% of all clicks lead to the “back” button on the browser
• 42% of search queries need refinement
• 50% of user search sessions are spent on longer queries.

Short queries, mapping keyword query to url, takes approximately 1-2 minutes.  More complex search queries can last as long as 30mins per search session with people looking to solve a sophisticated problem such as buying a product, finding specific health information or where to go out on a Saturday night.

Currently only available to US residents at www.bing.com/visualsearch, Microsoft launched today Bing’s Visual Search product.  It provides a graphical way to search and discover information.

When searching for a digital camera for example, Bing displays a “Visualize Digital Cameras” link next to the search results. After clicking this link, a rolling cascade of digital cameras is displayed.  While scrolling through the different products, the user is also able to refine their search query by clicking relevant links such as Type, Model, Optical Zoom and other specifications.

With Bing, Microsoft is aiming to help users perform simple key tasks within the Travel, Shopping, Health and Local Search categories.  Although, Bing’s visual search engine is not limited to these categories alone.  Bing also presents Popular Galleries, allowing users to select the best of movies, books, celebrities, sport, politicians and more.

Mehi accidently slipped that Bing will introduce “Twitter” results in the not too distant future.