Redmond, Washington – In a fresh move to prove its competence in the growing search market, software behemoth Microsoft’s Bing early this week unleashed a feature called “Snapshot” that it hopes would help you find fast factoids about the celebrities or landmarks in your queries with an update that spits out relevant information at the center of your search. The newly imitated feature is considered to be Microsoft’s response to Google’s integration of Knowledge Graph with Search.
Search engine users who embrace Microsoft’s Bing services instead of Google’s… well Bing announced that it is adding a couple new types of information to its three-column snapshot experience to include the categories of people and landmarks.
“Now when you search for a famous person, celebrity or place, we will present relevant facts about that person in the center part of the screen so you can quickly find what you are looking for without having to click through to another site or page,” Bing principal program manager Alam Ali wrote in a blog post.
As the above screenshot portrays, Microsoft used Pablo Picasso as an example, this means that any direct match searches from either category will result in normal search results combined with a relevant information to which we can view additional facts about him such as when he lived, his height, children, spouse and parents. Oh, yea – you can also view his artwork.
Amazingly, the two new categories, alongside content additions, helps to spice up snapshot’s existing purpose of spotlighting pertinent information, on the main search results page, directly related to your queries.
The company announcing the addition new categories through its official Bing blog said: “We have run thousands of experiments to see which types of tasks most frequently are searched for on Bing, and determined that people and places are among some of the most popular things people do in Bing.”
Moving along fast-forward, as for celebrity searches, Bing will now show a summary of current information such as recent movies, albums, and related celebrities, instead of a list of blue links. Also, you can watch movie trailers, listen to and purchase music, with just one-click.
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The company further claims, “We have now expanded the snapshot to cover famous people and places as well as made updates to include different sources including reviews and new modes of interaction,” Bing adds “Right on the main results page, you can make more informed decisions about topics related to people.”
Nevertheless, the eventual goal is to help you make quicker decisions. Bing has been billed as a “decision engine” all along, but the additional snapshot material, especially since its sandwiched between regular results and social findings, actually delivers on that promise.
Besides, Bing’s arch rival, Google, has already been providing this kind of service to its users for some time now, but it is nice to see Microsoft offering it to Bing users as it will make researching a famous person or place much easier.