How many times have you seen a movie trailer and forgotten the name of it the next day? 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. A study conducted by Microsoft Research shows that consumers can process results with images 20% faster than text only results. So it’s clear that images play a big part in helping consumer’s with a variety of search activities.
We have taken this to heart with Bing’s new Visual Search feature announced today as a beta at TechCrunch50. Visual Search is a new way to formulate and refine your search queries through imagery, particularly for sets of results that tend to be more structured. We call these data groupings galleries. Simply go to www.bing.com/visualsearch and install Silverlight if you don’t have it already. What you’ll see is an amazing new visual search experience. Visual Search allows you to quickly scroll through the galleries or do a one-click refinement using the quick tabs on the left, which are specifically relevant to the type of results you are browsing through.
Now to find that movie you were looking for, click on “Movies” and scroll through the imagery to find “what’s-his-name.” Now that you found it, hover your mouse over the movie to view details including title, rating, reviews, and how much it grossed at the box office, all right under the search box. Think about how much time you saved using Visual Search.
Below are a few more examples of visual search galleries and how to use them:
Product Search
When researching products online, research shows people want to gather as much information on the product before they make a purchase, images play a large role in this decision making process. For example, for holiday shoppers Visual Search can help you look for products from laptops to handbags. It’s like searching through a large online catalogue.
Books
Love Books? With Visual Search, you can search visually to find the best books faster. Again you narrow your results with 1-click filters such as author, format, or category to make it even easier to judge a book by its cover.
Cars
Looking for a new car? Sometime search feels like the classifieds, with all the long lists of results that make researching cars feel like a chore. Visually searching for cars on the other hand is like going to a massive virtual car showroom, you can search to your heart’s desire by simply clicking through the aisles. It saves a lot of time versus having to keep typing in all those search queries.
These are just a few of the highlights of our beta Visual Search feature that are currently available to help you search faster with a more organized search experience. We’ll be expanding the Visual Search experience over the coming months, so make sure to check back often and explore the Visual Search beta yourself at: www.bing.com/visualsearch and let us know what you think.
-Todd Schwartz, Bing
*As mentioned above, Visual Search is still in beta. Visual Search is currently only available in the US and as we refine this feature we will continue to look for new markets to release it in. Thanks for all the feedback on Visual Search!
