Earlier today, Brafton reported that Google is updating its search experience by offering consumers more social data in results. Now, Bing seems ready to battle with Google with its attempt to alter the landscape of search results.
Micrsoft’s corporate vice president for core search program management, Brian MacDonald, told Fast Company that Bing wants to bring about the end of the days of “10 blue links.” Bing wants to redesign the way results are presented to users – and it wants searchers to imagine a better, more visual search experience.
Fast Company reports that Microsoft has invested heavily in a search result redesign, hiring teams for visual, interaction and information design, as well as architecture and motion experts. To start, Bing says its homepage design aims to “right off the bat make [an] emotional connection [with searchers].”
Bing wants to transform the search experience into more visual event. Notably, Brafton reported last month that Bing launched a top image page to help make search more visual.
MacDonald explains that Bing’s Visual Search options let users see collections of information at one time, allowing them to click on images to learn more. Bing wants this element of visual exploration to become the new search norm – and the company thinks the general public is ready for this change.
MacDonald told the source:
Search is absolutely a consumer product, but, so far in its evolution, it’s been created with the algorithm front-most. The user interface was too optimized around that, rather than around the humans [who] were interacting with it.
Bing’s theory seems to be shared by Blekko, the search engine that lets users “slash the web” to find results more useful to them. Google also seems to be acting on the idea of advancing human interaction with web results, with its new Personal Blocklist Chrome extension allowing users to mark sites that aren’t relevant to them.
Marketers planning site optimization will want to monitor the extent to which Bing’s visually focused search wins over consumers. So far, the company’s efforts seem to be paying off; as Brafton reported, Bing’s searches rose 21 percent in January by Hitwise’s measure, and comScore data also shows that Bing is gaining ground in search.
