So first off I have to disclose that I work for Microsoft. That said, I had to cover the new Visual Search product from a viewer’s perspective. So MSFT has decided to test out a new feature called Visual Search. We saw it demo’d at our company meeting and it blew away the audience. Here is one very cool application for it, the top iPhone Aps: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch?q=Top+iPhone+apps&g=iphone_apps&FORM=Z9GE62.
How cool is that? The question that this raises is, “ok so this is cool, but what do I do with it?” Not in the sense of the user, the user gets another way to look for a product and link that to a search result and find a product not just by model name or number but by narrowing down their feature list thus producing a truly targeted search result. In this case, the user does not even need to know the model they are looking for. All they need is to know what they want in say a camera: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch?q=Digital+cameras&g=digital_cameras&FORM=Z9GE
From this page the user can simply customize the results by feature and thus target what they specfically want.
The issue is from the MSFT side, the question is, “how do we monetize this?” Paid inclusion? Standard CPC? I can say that these questions are being asked but I cannot talk about the plan. What is clear though is that MSFT is shaking up the search game more than people are giving credit for. You will see more enhancements to the Bing product before January so stay tuned. In the interim, play with the new tool here: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch
Maybe you want to learn some new yoga poses: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch?q=Yoga+poses&g=yoga_poses&FORM=Z9GE76
Or maybe research what type of dog you want: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch?q=Dog+breeds&g=dog_breeds&FORM=Z9GE2
This is an interesting first step in what will be a game changing year in search.
