Bing Autosuggest Feature Now Includes Search History
Dynamic URLs, Microsoft Bing, search engine optimization |
Bing has tweaked its search Autosuggest feature to also integrate query history in its bid to let its users complete search tasks more efficiently, according to a recent post on the Bing Search Blog. With this feature in place, Bing analyzes your search history and will now include the search terms you’ve used in the past into its Autosuggest box, a dropdown menu that appears whenever you type on the search field on the homepage.
This is borne out of the users’ common habit of searching with the same topics and queries multiple times. If you’re a regular Bing user, this will prove to be a subtle but particularly useful feature for your recurring searches.
When conducting a search, the Autosuggest menu appears with a list of search terms. The suggested terms based on query history would be in purple, much like visited links on any browser, while the other suggested words would be in blue like unvisited links.
The Bing blog also mentioned that 44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than a week and the new tweak to Autosuggest can definitely help in stringing previous searches together to start researching where you left off.
However, as useful as it may seem, this new feature poses an issue regarding user privacy since Bing will be perusing your browser’s search history. For this, Bing gives you a choice, either you safely remove a portion of your search history through the Manage History option, or simply disable Autosuggest altogether. Once turned off, you can re-enable it by clicking on the Preferences option.
The people behind Microsoft’s search engine believe that this new feature will make searching easier and reduce the time wasted by having to retype queries. This follows Bing’s last Autosuggest-related update in January which integrated trending queries and breaking news.
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RSpears @ March 10, 2010
