Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Bing Rolls Out Adaptive Search Feature

Can a search engine guess what you're thinking? That's something that search engine Bing is trying to do today, with a new "Adaptive Search" feature it announced today. Bing it says is looking to help solve the problem of ambiguous search terms, where limited information makes it difficult for the search engine to determine what you are really interested in. Bing said the new feature incorporates information about how users are using the site, to slowly personalize answers to more likely bring the most relevant to a user. For example, Bing said it would use contextual clues to determine if a user was searching for "Australia" the movie, or "Australia" the country, using cues such as if users are planning a vacation, or actually trying to decide on a movie to rent for the evening. The search engine emphasized it is avoiding creating a "filter bubble" and will not make any assumption which will prevent users from seeing a diverse set of results. Bing said the new feature will roll out in the US over the next few years.