Microsoft to Boost Bing's Filtering Capabilities

Bing, the successor of Live Search, comes to the table with filtering capabilities designed to help end users steer clear of inappropriate content. By default the search engine applies a moderate level of filtering, combing all explicit images and videos, but not text, from the search results that are returned to queries. The Redmond company has revealed that it considers the default level of filtering for Bing already more conservative than rival search engines. Nonetheless, the search safety configuration is going to be kicked up a notch in the future.

“We think our current search safety settings are solid but at Microsoft we are always working on pushing this stuff farther. We also are listening to customers, and some have told us they want more control and they want it now. In particular some folks who manage corporate networks have asked for tools now to enforce SafeSearch settings at the network level. So for right now, we wanted to let people know that you can add “adlt=strict” to the end of a query and no matter what the settings are for that session, it will return results as if safe search was set to strict,” explained Mike Nichols, general manager, Bing.

Nichols underlined that the workaround presented was nothing more than a temporary solution, and that the software giant was hard at work to produce and integrate a definitive solution into Bing. Still, for the time being, “adlt=strict” in combination with Bing searches will play nice with existing security products, even at enterprise level for managed network environments.

The issue was brought upon by media reports related to the Smart Motion Previews for videos. Bing, and Live Search before it, comes to the table with a feature that allows users to preview videos returned as results to queries right in the search engine. “The idea behind Smart Motion Previews is to give people the equivalent of a movie trailer for video results. When we crawl videos, we create short previews (never more than 30 seconds, made up of a few very short clips) that reflect what our video crawling technology thinks are the most relevant parts,” Nichols explained.

Microsoft received criticism over the Bing feature due to the possibility that the search engine would enable users to preview unwanted content, namely videos meant for an adult audience. The Redmond company said it was ready to tackle the issue. “In the next couple of months we will formalize this work so that a broader range of partners, applications and tools can take advantage of [the “adlt=strict”] functionality more easily. In addition, we are looking for more ways to give consumers more control to ensure that Bing gives them a great search experience,” Nichols promised.