Wed 23rd of June, filed under SEO
Google rival Bing has rolled out a new tool: Bing Entertainment, a new feature focusing entirely on film, television, gaming and music. Revealed at a star-studded Hollywood press event, the addition demonstrates Microsoft’s ongoing attempt to establish the difference between its search engine and Google by concentrating on customised search tools and visual design.
Bing Entertainment offers several tabs, allowing users to concentrate searches more effectively. They can browse entertainment as a whole or narrow their search to Music, Movies, TV, Games and Video Games. As well as providing centred searches, each tab on Bing Entertainment presents information on the latest and most popular songs, movies, games and television shows.
The entertainment search appears to be aiming to make it easier for Bing users to access the content they need without leaving the site. For example, alongside entertainment information, Bing Entertainment also allows users to watch 20,000 television episodes and listen to over 5 million songs on the site.
The Music tab presents users with the current top albums, most-played songs and most-played artists. It is also possible to listen to tracks, view musician profiles, concerts and events, and purchase songs from Amazon, iTunes or Zune. Similarly, Bing Movies provides information on the latest releases to cinema and DVD as well as box office details, customer reviews, trailers and plot synopses.
Teaming up with Hulu, Viacom and CBS, Bing also provides users with access to over 1,500 television shows. Meanwhile, Bing Games offers reviews, walkthroughs and cheats for popular video games while also supplying hundreds of the most popular online games on-site.
The new search feature also focuses heavily on social media integration, allowing users to access relevant tweets about movies or publish their own searches or favourite television episodes on other social networking sites.
Less time searching for great content, more time enjoying it
Microsoft appears happy with the way the new feature has rolled out. "Now we have millions of things going on and lots and lots of devices to consume it — the television, tablet, the phone," said the general manager for Bing product management, Mike Nichols.
"The new entertainment-search experience lets you spend less time searching for great content and more time enjoying this great content.”
With Bing reaching its first birthday this year, the new feature is another step forward in Microsoft’s attempt to wrest some of the search market share away from Google. Proven to be popular with women and a 12-24 demographic, Bing’s share of search has gone from eight per cent to 12 per cent, a figure which they expect to increase with the search engine’s imminent integration with Yahoo.
Posted by Carli Harris
