There are shopping articles that provide information about trends, that will be added week-to-week, according to Bing.

They’ve also made changes to the results pages. “Now when you search for a product, you will see larger images at the top of the screen,” explains Bing Shopping Sr Program Manager Larry Colagiovanni. “The refinements on the left hand side of the page also received improvements. Now you can insert your own price match in the left rail. If you’re looking for inspiration, we also display similar searches that others are doing.”

“So you can quickly find out information about a product, we have added the ability to hover over an item to see more about it, including average reviews and its top attributes,” he adds. “While you are shopping, we made it easy to add a product to your shopping list. You can share your shopping list on Facebook to get feedback from your friends or compare with other products on your ‘wish’ list.”

In addition, users can view the merchants that sell any given product, along with specs and product reviews, with an added “filmstrip” with the original results, for easier comparison.

Bing has been growing in search market share every month since its launch, according to Director Stefan Weitz. Microsoft released its quarterly earnings today, and they’re pretty good. Here’s the part of the announcement relevant to Bing:

Online Services Division revenue grew 14% year-over-year primarily driven by increases in search revenue. Bing’s US search share increased to 13.9% this quarter.

Google, on the other hand, fell short of expectations with their Q1 earnings report a couple weeks ago.

What do you think of the redesign to Bing Shopping?

"With help from Microsoft Research, we’ve improved how we handle price queries to deliver results that automatically reflect your budget," the Bing Shopping team writes in a blog post.  "This is especially handy when you’re on the go, and don’t have time to browse around and click the right refinements.  At the mall and wondering if you’re seeing a bargain? Just fire up the Bing for Mobile app on your phone and say ‘sony digital camera under $120′. Voila, it’s that easy."

"Under the hood, we try to detect a price constraint in your query, and intelligently adjust the results to match your criteria," the team adds. "Right now, this only works for prices, and only for US users.  This is just a small step in our journey to make search friendlier to natural language queries, and help you quickly find what you’re looking for."

The feature seems to work pretty well, based on the test queries I tried. Bing does appear to have a leg up on Google in this regards. Similar shopping searches on Google didn’t work out quite so well.

Bing recently added a new flight search suggestion feature to its search box, but that feature still appears to be in the process of rolling out. Bing’s David Lindheimer reminded me via Twitter to see if it was working, and it is still not. 

This is the largest purchase Microsoft has made in a while. The company appears to be playing around with the money it had left from the Yahoo deal falling through. They dropped 486 million big ones on this one.

According to ComScore, Ciao has over 26.5 million unique visitors per month, and the site features over 5 million product reviews. Still, there is some question as to why Microsoft would spend such a large amount of money on such a purchase. MG Siegler at Venture Beat writes:

Microsoft’s play here is apparently to become more ingrained in European consumer search and online habits. Going after more shopping traffic seems questionable considering the laughable move it made back in May to pay users to use its Live search engine to look for purchases to make. Given that Microsoft’s search share once again fell last month, it appears that strategy failed, as we thought it would.

Greenfield is not all about shopping search. It is well known for online surveys, but Microsoft is apparently not interested in this division of the company. Microsoft will sell it to an already existent, but unspecified buyer, according to PaidContent.org.

Microsoft says Ciao’s technology platform, online community, and extensive merchant relationships will be integrated within the Live Search platform to deliver a "richer, more rewarding" experience for advertisers and consumers. Microsoft also says its search has three objectives:

- Deliver the best results

– Simplify key tasks

– Innovate in the business model (or simplify how consumers research and purchase online)

"Work is ongoing to ensure that Live Search delivers across all these categories, building on recent progress including the acquisition of Multimap and the decision to open a European Search Technology Centre this financial year," says Microsoft.

Will any of this have a significant effect on Microsoft’s search market share? That remains to be seen, but the general feeling is a skeptical one.

That’s basically what Scott Friend, a partner at Bain, hinted at, though Friend employed some much more elegant phrasing.  “Our extensive diligence on this investment and our past industry experience helped us conclude that TheFind.com is leading its category in developing the best consumer shopping experience for lifestyle goods,” he stated on TheFind Blog.

And there were no other signs in the post that TheFind has any revolutionary changes in store.  That’s not a bad thing, though.

TheFind has been pretty successful up ‘til now – judging by an interview with the Red Herring, Bain considers Google to be its biggest competitor, and still says, “[T]hey do not do the browsing as well.  The pictures are very small.  It hasn’t been clear that Google has made it a priority… That’s good for TheFind.”

Also good for TheFind is Loren Baker’s description: “TheFind.com focuses on delivering accurate and comprehensive search results for lifestyle goods,” he notes, and later writing that the site has “has an efficient and visually-engaging format that fuels product discovery.”