Microsoft overhauls Bing video search, making it easier to find artists and songs

Microsoft has unveiled an extensive makeover of its Bing video-search experience which aims to match - and perhaps surpass - Google’s video search.

Microsoft  now has a pretty solid search engine with Bing - although it cost billions to develop - but its video search feature up until last week still lagged way behind Google’s. 

Artist bar

When searching for an artist such as Lady Gaga now users are presented with a bar immediately under the search results that displays the most popular songs by that artist. Selecting each of those songs brings up the most relevant video search results as thumbnails underneath.

Microsoft ‘hero’ 

With this revamp Microsoft has made it much easier to find relevant videos by selecting what it calls a ‘hero’ - the most relevant result - which is displayed as a large thumbnail on top of other results. 

The ‘hero’ is selected based on the number of views and relevance factors. The feature seems to works well if you are searching for a specific song.

More information

The search results now provide additional information such as the upload date and view count right next to the video and - just like on YouTube -provide users with some suggestions on potential related searches and even related artists. 

Previews

The ’Hero’ video result can be viewed right on the search page as an embed without having to actually visit YouTube for example, whilst when it comes to other search results it is possible to preview a short clip of the video by simply hovering over the thumbnail with the mouse. This is handy since on YouTube it is often difficult to figure out if the result is actually the video you're looking for or simply someone commenting on the video you're looking for.

Verdict

Microsoft has come up with a well-built and responsive video search page that should translate well to mobile even in app form. The difficult part - as always - is to get people to actually use Bing rather than Google - but with the release of Windows 10 just around the corner and the increasing popularity of the Surface tablets for school, Microsoft could capture the interest of the video surfing crowd thanks to this extensive redesign. 

 

(Andrea Leonelli)