For example, when you search digital cameras, it shows the images of 1,562 digital cameras in an semi-3D array, see image on the left. You can scroll up and down to pick the ones that look nice to you, or you can use the feature selector on the left to select number of pixels, zoom, price range, etc, and it will narrow down the image array to the ones matching the selected features. So it provides quick way to visually find a camera you like.

On Bing Visual Search, it also offers other pre-made visual searches, including dog breeds, handbags, movies, even politicians. The downside of this visual search feature is that each of these visual searches has to be manually built, very much like the old Yahoo directories, only now with visual navigation. So there is the scalability and timeliness issues. Visual search will work well on things where the looks matter, these actually include many things, such as handbags, shoes, sunglasses, furniture, home decor, fashion, travel, pets, etc. As long as a category is popular enough to warrant the man power to create a visual search for it, it can be done. Because it is pre-made, it will suffer in the real-time-ness of the data. New items may not be included days after launch or until it becomes popular.

Many players have tried different ways of doing visual search, and they all have failed to gain traction. The right areas for visual search should be things where looks matter, there is huge search volume, and it can be monetized.  Shopping and travel are two top candidates. Another area is dating. The first dating site that will bring the Bing Visual Search feature for browsing potential dates will be a hueg hit.

Bing has been providing good search results on par with Google. With the new visual search feature and other planned features to be relased around Christmas this year, we believe that Bing will start to gain market share. This is good thing because when there is only one dominant player in an area, the competition and hence the innovation goes down, and the prices go up.  However, people’s habits are hard to change. Most people’s search needs are met by Google, I doubt the visual search will be enough to convert many people. It may draw some curious drive-by traffic, but it may not be enough to draw people back when they need to do quick search.

Another example is the 8% discount you get on eBay buy-it-now when you use Bing to search for something and then follow the eBay ad to eBay. Many people first pick something they want to buy, just before they click the buy button, they go to Bing to search for a product, then click on the 8% off eBay ad to come back to eBay. Refreshing the screen of the item you want to buy, the 8% discount now shows up. The 8% discount draws people to Bing, but these same people may not use Bing to search for other things.

Surprisingly, one small feature in Bing that has drawn attention from school kids is the high definition images that Bing display on its home page, where when you float your cursors on different parts of the image, an interesting fact and a search link pops up.

What do you think of the search war between Google and Microsoft? What will make you switch to Bing?