Microsoft has updated its Bing video search engine with many great new features in a bid to lure users away from YouTube.
“People love online videos. A video can teach us something new, connect diverse communities, or simply entertain. It’s no wonder this space continues to boom with billions of videos viewed online each month,” the Bing team noted in a blog post announcing the update.
“To make the Bing video-search experience even better, we just released a new layout that makes searching easier and faster. The design changes give you the information you need to quickly pick the right videos to watch.”
The new update brings in a host of useful features including larger and easier-to-identify video thumbnails, video previews, as well as additional information about the videos.
Larger video thumbnails make it easier for users to find the video they are searching for by simply looking at the thumbnail. Bing users will now have the option to preview the video right in the search results or click through to the source of the video to watch it there and explore related queries more easily.
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The refreshed Bing search engine also shows additional information on the video search page like channel, upload date, and view count. Furthermore, music searches will now show a module up at the top for the artist with a photo and a list of other popular songs with links to those videos. Searches for songs will now highlight the best result based on relevance and popularity.
Bing has also optimized the layout keeping touch screens and tablets in mind, scaling better to mobile devices for easy scrolling.
Last but not the least, Bing video search engine shows results from all over the web and not just YouTube.
It will be interesting to note whether the new update will result in attracting more users to Microsoft Bing. The update is live now on Bing.
