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The launch of Bing, Microsoft’s much anticipated new search engine, was announced early this morning (AEST) by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, at the D: All Things Digital conference in California.
Set to change the nature of search as we know it, Bing offers a more organised search experience for consumers to help them find what they need in a far more efficient and relevant manner.
With research showing that as many as 25% of searches remain unanswered and another 25% of searches lead to results that are irrelevant, Bing aims to improve the search experience for consumers in what is a market unchanged for almost a decade and ripe for innovation.
Designed to better anticipate user intent, Bing incorporates innovative and unique features such as:
- Instant answers – displays query answers directly within the search results page using text, images and video preview
- Best match – cleanly shows one result for popular navigational queries
- Hover preview – displays a summary of each site’s content directly from the results page
- Rich image search – allows infinite scroll of image results and extensive refinement options on just the one page
- Video thumbnail preview – plays an excerpt of the video content within the search results page
The name Bing was chosen due to its short length, the ease with which it can be spelt and said and because of its global appropriateness. Bing also carries inherent qualities that fit very naturally to the search experience, connoting “fast”, “easy” and “delight”.
As well as the new brand and unique search features, Bing also delivers a new homepage image each day using inspirational photographs from around the world. These photographs include iconic Australian images such as Uluru, the Melbourne Film Festival and native wildlife.
The beta version of bing.com.au will be publically available from Wednesday 3rd June 2009 incorporating all the innovative new product features mentioned above.
Over the next 12 months, additional localised features for Bing will be released into the Australian market. These features include Hot Spots, Categorised Search and Vertical Search Categories covering local, travel, health and shopping.
For more information visit www.bing.com and www.bing.com.au