14 DAY TRIAL // One feature that Microsoft’s Bing search engine does not present anymore is Visual Search. Last year, the option was announced to be en-route to be phased out, and it appears that the move was already completed.
For quite some time now, in fact, there has been no more Visual Search available in Bing, and it seems that the link to the Visual Search announcement on the official Bing blog does not work either.
However, although it announced plans to discontinue the option, Microsoft did not offer specific info on when the move would be made.
The link to Bing’s feature is now dead, and all those who head over to www.bing.com/visualsearch will be able to verify that.
According to a recent article on LiveSide, Microsoft did confirm that the feature was decommissioned a while ago, but it was mum on when it turned the switch off.
“Last fall, we began the process of removing Visual Search galleries on Bing. Like all of our betas, Visual Search was part of an on-going effort to better understand how we can offer the best search experience possible,” a Microsoft spokesperson reportedly stated.
“We learned a lot from the Visual Search beta and we’ll apply that knowledge to Bing as part of our continuing effort to help users ‘do’ more, while keeping our offerings visually appealing. This does not affect nor should be confused with Image Search, which will remain a key feature for us.”
The Redmond-based software giant has been hard at work lately with offering enhancements to its Bing services, and the removal of Visual Search appears to have been included in the process.
Last week, the company announced the debut of a new look for Bing’s search results page, now structured on three columns and featuring social networking integration on the right-hand side, so as to enable users to make their searches more personal than before.