Microsoft announced that it was beginning the process of rolling out some significant change to their Bing search engine. The changes start with a new logo, which is designed to better link the search engine to Microsoft’s other products including the Xbox and the traditional Microsoft logo. Microsoft is attempting to develop a “one Microsoft” culture where all their products and services are designed to complement each other more seamlessly. Of course, the logo is just one of the changes they announced, and perhaps the least significant.
Snapshot
Microsoft has combined their social sidebar and snapshot into one tool, which is featured more prominently in the right column. The new snapshot is similar to Google’s “knowledge Graph”. Social results will be listed below the structured data on a specific subject. This is the latest attempt to integrate social and search together, and at first glance it seems they’ve done a nice job.
Page Zero
Page Zero is a new feature with Bing. It uses deep linking for providing pre-SERP results to users. Whether searching from the bing home page, or a search results page, Bing will display shortcuts to information that is commonly searched for. The goal with Page Zero is to deliver people the information they want more quickly. In addition to just providing search term suggestions, Page Zero lists out a number of links which are commonly chosen when searching for similar terms.
Pole Position
The new feature called “Pole Position” will be displayed when Bing is able to confidently provide the user with the information they want based on the search term. It evaluates user intent and displays a significantly larger and more detailed set of results at the top of the SERP. This works when searching for things like weather in a specific city, celebrities, or other searches people perform when attempting to learn similar information.
Adapting Multiple Devices
Bing has now been better optimized to display a cleaner page based on the screen size of the device being used. This is another step toward helping people choose Bing no matter where they are searching from, whether it is a 4 inch smart phone, a 10 inch tablet, a 21 inch monitor or a 60 inch television, Bing will optimize itself to give the best user interface possible. Everything from the colors used to the layout of the page will adjust based on screen size and resolution. Microsoft said the following about this new feature:
Our new layout is built from the ground up to work across devices and will adjust both to the size of the screen and the context of the user so we present the right experience at the right time. Results should look as beautiful on a Surface or iPad as they do on a PC or phone. Our new platform will enable us to improve experiences across an ever growing range of devices, like mobile . . . Part of this focus on mobile and tablet devices means integrating touch into our experiences and we’ve introduced a number of capabilities to allow for more rapid refinements in the future.
This is, perhaps, the most significant set of updates and changes to Microsoft’s search engine since it changed from the “Live Search Engine” to Bing. While only playing with these features for a short time, they appear to be a significant improvement and advancement for the search engine. The updates also help to connect Bing with other Microsoft products, which will be helpful in marketing and other strategies going forward.
