Redmond, Washington — Microsoft has announced today that its flourishing Bing search engine is now supporting query history in its Autosuggest feature. Indicating that Bing does not only analyze your usual search behavior based on earlier searches if you have your search history enabled.
Bing has fine-tuned its query suggestion feature that incorporates a bit of personalization. Meaning, Bing does not only examine your usual search behavior, but it will now also check your actual previous searches to suggest search terms for your current search.
This is pretty handy if you search for the same topics again and again, e.g. your favorite hobbies. Since many web users tend to return to similar search topics, it makes sense to incorporate relevant terms into query suggestions. And that is just what Bing has accomplished with its Autosuggest feature. It will now take query history into consideration when serving up suggested keywords.
Autosuggest indicates that if you are performing a search, autosuggest will instantly display your earlier search queries in the same color your browser uses to display visited links (purple). This could be a helpful search feature if you use Bing often. For recurring searches you do not have to retype the whole search strings anymore as Bing will pull out your previous searches and suggest them to you. The usual Bing autosuggest terms are still in blue colored text.
Of course, there is a warning here when it comes to user privacy. But according to Bing, “You are in full command of your query history”. “We know your privacy is very important to you. You can turn History on or off at any time or selectively remove any portion of your search history using the Manage History option. You will see both of these choices every time you use Autosuggest.”
“Many search tasks span multiple search sessions even days or weeks,” Bing says. “In fact, 44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week! Perhaps you need to research the purchase of a new automobile. You might use Bing to find a retail location and to further research online – over many days – to make the best decisions on your big ticket purchase. With history support in Autosuggest, you can restart a previous search session by typing a few characters to see your previous queries and start researching right where you left off. We know from our testing that this makes you more effective at your longer search tasks.”