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11 November 2013

New Bing Logo and “One Microsoft”: New Features

New Bing Logo and “One Microsoft”

new bing logo

In the summer of 2013 Microsoft made the announcement that it intended to adjust how Bing operated. It announced that the changes were intended to create a format where both users and developers would be able to tap into a vast wealth of resources in order to help them achieve their goals. Additionally, this announcement was also accompanied by a new Bing logo which was unveiled at the same time. Microsoft has produced a demonstrative video to educate users about what they can expect from the new Bing. To view this video, click here.

New Bing Logo

Bing produced an extensive blog which detailed everything which went into the selection and design of their new Bing logo. However this can be surmised briefly. Why did Bing elect to have a new logo? Bing is currently embarking on a year of reinvention, due to this a new logo was required. In Microsoft’s words the new logo is “clean, simple and direct”. The blog can be read in its entirety by clicking here. With the new Bing logo they spent time considering how colour can communicate in order to create a logo which “reflects and builds on Bings existing identity”.

Modern Redesign And New Features For Bing

The new Bing logo was not the only change which was made to the search engine. In addition to a logo redesign the search engine also received a modern redesign. The search engine also released a number of new and updated features which are now available to use on Bing.com. Beneath is an outline of these new features and what users can expect from them.

Snapshots: Providing helpful Information At A Glance

In 2012 Bing unveiled a new feature which enabled users to see what their Facebook friends knew about a particular search query. Under this feature users can see the results from their Facebook friends on the right hand side of the results page, those results produced by Bing can be viewed on the left hand side of the results page. Although this feature may not be new, the Bing redesign incorporates the two search results seamlessly.

Page Zero: Finding Results Without Searching

Most modern search engines such as Bing or Google provide a number of suggestions for the particular search query which a user may be investigating. However under the redesign Bing has taken this concept a step further with their new feature called Page Zero. With Page Zero, as a user is typing in a search, relevant results will instantly appear on the right hand side of the page.

Pole Position: Providing High Confidence Results

With the new Pole Position feature, when users enter a search query Bing will provide a number of results at the top of the results in “Pole Position.” This new feature works best when ambiguous terms or words with several different meanings are searched. In order to provide these results, Bing makes use of a combination of their own metrics and the previously mentioned Snapshot feature.