To better differentiate itself in the
market, Microsoft is rolling out a new visual search feature for its recently launched search engine Bing.
Still in a beta test phase, Visual Search lets users search visually, such as
through a photo gallery of designer handbags, rather than scrolling through text links. Users can then continue to narrow their search with an option such as "highest priced" bags, then "Fendi." The
feature, which requires users to download Microsoft's video software Silverlight, is available in about 50 categories, including celebrities, movies, U.S. politicians, yoga poses, cell phones, digital
cameras and pro athletes.
The feature was inspired by recent Microsoft Research, which found that consumers can process results with images 20% faster than text-only results.
"How many
times have you seen a movie trailer and forgotten the name of it the next day?" asked Todd Schwartz, group product manager for Bing, on the Bing Community blog. "You go online to search for it but you
can't seem to find the movie with 'what's-his-name' in it anywhere but you can picture the actor in your head."
Visual Search is a new way to formulate and refine one's search queries through
imagery, particularly for sets of results that tend to be more structured. Bing is calling these data groupings galleries. When researching products online, Microsoft's research showed that people
wanted to gather as much information as possible on the product before they make a purchase, while images play a large role in this decision-making process.
As a result, for holiday shoppers,
Visual Search can help users look for products from laptops to handbags. "It's like searching through a large online catalogue," said Schwartz.
Images were the second-most-used search vertical
among users, according to recent data conducted by Microsoft. Across all search engines, it found that more than 1 billion queries occur monthly in the vertical, excluding blended search results that
serve up organically on the page.
People typically also engage with results that return images. Microsoft found that people view more pages per query when accompanied by an image, and they spend
more time on the page.
What's more, while 40% of the overall image queries are related to commercial searches, such as travel and shopping, Microsoft found that another 44% of the searches for
images related to science and nature and fashion, as well as tattoos. The remainder of searches related to entertainment, from movies and television to video games and celebrities.