Bing is rolling out what it calls “Adaptive Search.” The company says it “helps decipher the intent and context of each search you conduct based on your search history.”

“The concept of personalized search is not a new idea, but Bing continues to focus on it and drive progress as the search space evolves,” a representative for Bing tells WebProNews. “In fact, Bing views personalized search as less of a ‘feature’ and more of what to expect from search.”
 
“Ultimately, the goal is to reduce ambiguity and help people find what they’re looking for more quickly,” he adds. “The personalization can be pretty subtle to the naked eye, but the more Bing learns about your intent the more personal it will become. And Bing also wants to be sure a diverse set of results still show up so people aren’t locked in a ‘filter bubble’. We think this provides a good balance.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of the “filter bubble” it’s essentially the idea that content that we consume on the web is being filtered by the sites we use as a way of personalizing our experience and making it more relevant to us. It can reduce noise, but it also means we’re missing out on some things, and it is something of a controversial topic. We’ve discussed this more in depth in past articles, which you can find here.

Explaining how Adaptive Search works, the Bing representative tells us, “At the risk of generalizing, let’s say you’re a film fanatic and when you search for ‘Australia’ you aren’t likely searching for Australia the country. You’re probably searching for Australia the 2008 movie. Bing will take into account the fact you often search for movies and adapt the search page to show relevant movie results higher up on the page. This helps decrease your time spent searching and increases time spent buttering your popcorn.”

Here’s a video discussing Adaptive Search:

It’s rolling out over the next few days, but if you want to use it, you can just turn on your Search History and then search.