Last week we unveiled Bing and today you can now try it for yourself at Bing.com!
Bing is our new and more powerful internet search service, which we are calling a Decision Engine. Essentially, Bing helps people cut through all the clutter that exists on the Internet and gives people a wide range of “intelligent” information designed to help people make decisions faster. It’s designed to meet the needs of today’s searchers and those needs go beyond simply behind a simple search engine.
Of course it’s also a great all-around search engine for finding the information you need too!
Bing introduces several new search features I think you will enjoy:
- Best Match: A fast way to identify the best matched site for a given query. Target is a great example. Try it here.
- Definitive card (D-card): More insight into a particular site such as the hard-to-find customer service telephone number. Try it here for UPS.
- Answers: Easy access to information designed to provide the sought-after information within the body of the search results page. For example – ask Bing “who was the 11th president?” or “what time is it?” and you will get an Instant Answer.
- Preview: With so many clicks coming back from unsatisfactory results, this feature lets you preview what is on a site from the results page, to help reduce wasted trips to sites you weren't looking for.
- Explore Pane: We have introduced the new left hand pane, which we call the Explore Pane. This is where we offer features that help with searching such as Quick Tabs, Related Searches and Search History.
- Search History: This feature is aimed at helping you get back to the searches you've done before and save you clicks. You can see it in the left-hand Explore Pane.
- Quick Tabs: The Quick Tabs give you easy access to the most common refinements for a given query. This categorization is aimed at making it easy to refine your query and reduce information overload.
We are also introducing Bing Travel where people who are looking to travel can compare location, price and amenities of multiple hotels. A color coded key is provided for the best values. It also has a Price Predictor that helps people decide when to buy an airline ticket in order to get the lowest prices.
You can add Bing as your default Search Provider in Internet Explorer 8 today by clicking here.
Note: The Live Search Web Slices for Internet Explorer 8 I discussed in this blog post back in February all work today under Bing! Try them out as I find them pretty handy.
For staying on top of all the Bing news and deep dives into the awesome Bing features – I suggest visiting the Bing Community. The Bing Community is a collection of Bing blogs and forums dedicated to an open discussion on Bing.
Congratulations to my friends on the Bing Team for their amazing release!