Bing has started testing new personalized search features, aimed at making individual search results more effective. "Personalized search is not new, but Bing is taking a different approach, focused on the type of search a person is doing and understanding more about what that person is likely searching for," a spokesperson for Bing tells WebProNews. "As no two people have the exact same search behavior, Bing has taken the extra step to automatically tailor search results."
One feature involves results based on previous searches. "People often search for the same thing over and over and choose the same link regardless of where it is on the results page because they know exactly what they want," Bing says. "Now, when a person searches in Bing for the same term multiple times and consistently clicks on a search result that happens to be lower on the results page, it will eventually be promoted to the top position. For example, if a person is searching for {ACS} looking for the American Cancer Society that website appears lower in the results page, but if they consistently choose the American Cancer Society website when searching {ACS} that result will eventually be promoted to the top of the page."
The other new feature comes in the form of results tailored to location. "Results are now tailored to the city a person is searching from," Bing says. "People will no longer have to type their location when searching for a local result. For example, instead of typing ‘Pizza in Seattle’ to find the website of popular pizza joint in Seattle, a user in Seattle can simply search for “Pizza” to see local results."
The new features are rolling out today. Bing talks about them more in this blog post.
To be honest, it’s a little surprising that Bing is just now incorporating these features into its search engine now.