Microsoft launched their new “decision engine” this week called Bing. Bing is called a decision engine in part because it was  designed to help users find what they are looking for without having to keep going back to refine their initial search query. Bing officially replaces Microsoft’s former search engine, Live. After lots of in-office sampling, we came up with 5 cool Bing features that you can see right on the initial response page that show exactly how Bing does its thing:

1. Farecast – Automatically pops up for travel related searches with helpful information.  It works as an aggregator of travel prices like Kayak but also includes trends for prices over time, letting you know when to buy.

2. Easy Answers – Answers to queries show up right on the search results page, eliminating time spent clicking in to pages to see if it’s actually what you wanted.  Here’s an example for “Definition of Search.”

3. Health Searches – Finding reliable information on health can prove to be incredibly difficult online.  Bing has made this much easier by pulling results from sources such as Mayo Clinic, Medline Plus, MD Consultand listing them at the top of the page.

4. Category Breakout – Easy to use category filtering that is specific to searches.  For instance, a search for DVD players brings up an option to sort by repair, accessories, buying guidesand more on the left-hand side of the page.

5. Rich Snippets – Mousing over to the right side of any link provides a page preview which can include a summary of the page, additional links, and contact info. This can help users determine whether a link is relevant without having to actually click through to the page.

Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them here or check out Reprise Media folks on Twitter.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Microsoft, Search: News, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.