Microsoft dropped a major new Bing feature today: "visual search." It does what it sounds like, instead of giving you a list of links with thumbnails, Bing gives you a bunch of images you can sort through. But does this actually help?
Announced at the TechCrunch50 today, visual search is a gallery-based system that helps you refine by clicking through rows of stuff. Microsoft says they developed the feature because images seem to please Web users.
Give visual search a shot, and you'll notice one thing first: you have install Microsoft's awful Silverlight plug-in to use it. Alright Redmond, I'll play along. Once back in Bing, you can enjoy some sample searches. I picked digital cameras. This was a bad idea, since most digital cameras look the same--even to a cameraphile like me. Click on one, and you're zipped straight to text-based list results. So much for the images.
The feature works better for things that stick in your brain because of their aesthetic appeal--things like books or cars. Even so, visual search isn't very deep; when I click on something, I want the visual goodness to keep going, and it doesn't. Still, for some searches--faces, art, and so on--Bing now has another edge on Google.
Related Stories: | Topics:Innovation, Technology, Search Engine Wars, Bing, search, google, image, visual, Posterous.com, Bing.com, Microsoft Corporation, Digital Cameras, Electronics |
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Recent Comments | 5 Total
September 15, 2009 at 1:32am by Natalya Pastukh
Obviously, the hand bag search result works much better than the camera result. And yes, I think it is helpful with some suitable queries.
I think it's beneficial to the web economy as a whole that ever since it's relaunch, Live Search / Bing is gaining interesting features which help forming an alternative to the Google monolith.
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Natalya
http://www.luxpar.eu/
September 15, 2009 at 4:58am by Claire Jennings
Bing does seem to be excellent for images. For those of you who watched the gadget show last night, it won the weather challenge as well. Bing was put up against Google, and when typing in 'weather London' bing brought back more detailed weather results, but both Search engines brought back the results as quick as each other, but Bing was just that little bit more detailed. However, after doing many tests with Google Vs All other search engines, Google still won, with it's fantastic Google map and tracking system for the orienteering task. It is Google all the way for me.
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Web Design - Search Engine Optimisation
September 16, 2009 at 10:49am by Joshua Stengel
"...you have install Microsoft's awful Silverlight plug-in to use it."
What an incredibly ignorant and presumptuous statement to make. You herald the features this plug-in provides yet label it as "awful". Your credibility takes a hit for this article.
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