Bing Revamps Entertainment Search

A June 2010 update to Microsoft’s Bing search engine improves search results for entertainment-related searches, including the ability for users to play certain songs and casual games directly from a search results page without leaving the site. The update continues Microsoft’s tactic of offering enhanced search results for queries in popular areas in hopes of drawing some users away from Google.

What’s New?

The update adds enhanced search results for queries related to entertainment. Some results include digital media content, such as audio and video, that’s mostly licensed from partners. Other results contain information, such as reviews and news, aggregated from around the Web. Microsoft has made similar enhancements to its search engine for other types of queries, including shopping and travel.

The enhancements, some of which echo features already available on Google’s search engine, apply to queries in the following areas:

Music. Queries about popular music, such as artist names, song titles, or album titles, will return some results with small “play” arrows next to them. Using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, users will be able to play full-length audio versions of these songs in a separate pop-up window that features the Zune brand. After one playback of the full song, users will only hear 30-second samples. Microsoft has licensed approximately 5 million titles for this feature.