Find Top iPhone Apps with Bing Visual Search
Microsoft introduced Bing’s Visual Search feature last September. The feature is based on visual images as search queries. A study conducted by Microsoft Research shows that consumers can process results with images 20% faster than text only results.
Visual Search allows you to quickly scroll through the galleries organized in 5 categories shown on the left (galleries sets of results that tend to be more structured) 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.
From my quick test: clicking on shopping, I selected iPhone App gallery and top iPhone apps. The feature seems to work well for various sub-categories such Top-free, Top-paid,… ad more importantly, the animated visuals help me to remember which one I might have seem before but forgot its name… Alternatively, visual search engine that I tested previously at http://oSkope.com seems to cover broader search range.
[Video courtesy of Neowin]
From the Bing blog:
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.
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.
As we mentioned earlier, the technology is based on Silverlight technology. If you go to www.bing.com/visualsearch for a spin, the site will detect if you have Silverlight, you can download it from there.
No comments yet.