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Bing in Spring

Mar 25, 2010 4:26 pm by Sunshine | 8 comments

There are going to be some changes to Bing. Today at SES New York the Bing team shared their plans to begin testing some new Bing features as they are moving into he next wave of innovation rolling out later this spring and summer. One of the changes is a new design for search results. Over the next few months, they are going to test some new design concepts moving Quick Tabs functionality to the top of the page.

Current:

New:

[Image by Microsoft]

Another thing the team is testing are new experiences for real-time results. For example, when you search for a publication such as the New York Times, Bing will not only give you quick access to specific sections of the destination website, but also provides the most popular shared links from that publication.

Furthermore they are previewing a new Web App, which brings real time data from foursquare into the Silverlight maps experience:

The foursquare map app is a powerful combination of the spatial canvas that Bing Maps provides, combined with foursquare’s user reputation service ability to see who has unlocked specific badges, where and who has been crowned mayor of certain locations making it easier to explore any city in the world as if you were a local. Let’s say you’re travelling to New York City for the week, but you don’t know what’s hot in Greenwich Village. Selecting the foursquare Map App in Bing Maps, and zooming into to Greenwich Village will get you tips that show you what locals are saying about the hot spots in that area. It’s like an interactive day planner, designed to help find the best things to do in that area. And if you have questions, you can always contact users through foursquare to get the inside scoop.

You will see some of this roll out as the team begins their testing, with more to come! Can’t wait! Let us know if you spot anything new.

Bing Search Blog: New Stuff Coming From Bing This Spring

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tino
Well, it does look worse, IMO. Can’t believe that these screenshots show the final design. What about that 80 million dollar blue for links? It’s gone in the new design.
> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20000623-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
- JohnCz
  You probably shouldn’t judge colors based on the poor quality of the Beta snapshot image. If you compare the orange search buttons you can see something happen in the compression of that latest snapshot.
- http://about.me/mackenzieprice mackenziepricee
  Agree, I have already voiced my opinion on the Bing Community forums.
  What happened to ‘Search Overload Is Over’.
  The new tabs under the search bar have INCREASE the ammount of blue links we would normaly see on any search engine.
  I am making close to 100 searches a day on Bing, I am seriously considering moving to another search engine now.
  They need to remember they are trying to attract Google users who are used to seeing a plain white background with 10 links. Showing them this will send them straight back to Google.
http://revanmj.pl/ Michał Jakubowski
They should made most of the features available for all countries first, and then start testing new ones. For example in Poland it is less functional than Google. They care only about US, UK and maybe few other countries so I’m not suprised that they can’t gain popularity.
- http://www.andinia.com/ Pablo
  I agree with you; it is odd that they didn’t try to run around their competitors by actually trying to become poppular in “the resto of the world” first, and then in those “big” markets.
JohnCz
I wonder what was the motivation behind changing the vertical category (gray background with orange header) into horizontal tabs. It does make better use of space. Being an internal Beta snapshot probably explains why we don’t see Sponsor’d links (blue background). MSN/Hotmail menus (at top) seem to be missing from the top of page. And the top of page menu also seems more condensed. I sort of prefer the current version in that regard. Finally, what happened to the Advanced Search option?
JohnCz
Are there any changes to the home page? I like the white font color, so I hope they don’t change that even though in the Beta snapshot shot shows “Bing” in blue.
- Tedjom
  I highly doubt the bing logo will change on the home page. That blue bing logo on the search page has always been there. If you type in ‘www.bing.com/?rb=0′ then it will get rid of the picture background, and the bing logo will be blue on the search results page.
  So again, I highly doubt the home page will change.