One new technology that the Bing engineering team has been working on, that you may not have heard about, is “Satori” – means understanding in Japanese. This technology enables us to understand the relationships between the collection of entities that surround them, whether it’s people, places or things. The grand vision is to seamlessly integrate the digital and physical worlds by encompassing billions of entities and relationships. That’s not all; Bing also incorporates a handy “Sidebar”, a social feature that basically searches users’ social networks for information relevant to the search query. Continue reading to see five more Bing features that you may not have known about. And, while you’re at it, try the Bing It On Challenge yourself and experience why in blind tests, people preferred Bing over Google for the web’s top searches.*

5. Daily Inspiration

Microsoft’s Bing homepage is both sleek and stylish. Each day, there’s a new image to provide daily inspiration, complete with information hotspots that are directly embedded into the image, popular searches, and even links to the hottest videos, news stories, shopping / travel deals, images, entertainment, along with maps. Plus, occasionally the Bing homepage will feature rich HTML5-powered videos in place of the daily image for an even more immersive experience.

4. Smart Motion Preview

Don’t you just hate clicking on a video thumbnail only to discover that it wasn’t exactly what you were looking for? With Bing’s innovative Smart Motion Preview, you can actually hover over a video and immediately watch a short preview – sound included – without having to actually visit the site. This definitely comes in handy when you’re looking for a specific clip and don’t have the time to browse each and every video at the originating site.

3. Travel Price Predictor

With Bing’s airfare price predictions, you’ll quickly see if fares are rising or dropping and whether you should buy or wait. Simply put, when you search for flights on Bing Travel, you’ll get results directly from multiple sources, and when you find the flight you want, Bing sends you to book it on the supplier’s site. Yes, Bing Travel makes it easy on you by analyzing “millions of round-trip flight itineraries daily and intelligently filters airfare data to reveal the best prices and deals. The Bing Travel Price Predictor can advise you whether fares are rising, holding steady, or dropping, and whether you should buy now or wait.”

2. FanSnap Events

Bing has partnered with FanSnap to bring you the best deals on the hottest events. With this feature, anyone can find and compare event tickets from leading tickets sites. You’ll be able to check out the view from the seat and quickly find the best value with Bing.

1. Bing It On Challenge

Still not convinced that Bing is for you? Then it’s time to try the Bing It On Challenge. Bing It On allows people to compare unbranded web search results side-by-side. The user selects which results they prefer on 5 searches, and then the tool reveals the search engine they liked better. Microsoft doesn’t expect Bing to win every time for every person. They created the tool to help people determine which web searches results are best for them, based on their own personal preference. Whether it�s the new leaked iPad photos or just the latest breaking news, Bing is up for the challenge to prove why the search engine rocks.

We tried the Bing Challenge ourselves using a variety of high-tech terms, including “Leaked iPad 5 Photos” (pictured above), “iPhone 6 pictures”, “McLaren P1”, “Ferrari LaFerrari”, and “Lamborghini Prototype”. As you can see, in our blind test, we preferred Bing results. It may have gone either way should we have run the same search queries multiple times, but our favorite features from Bing were how the images were showcased above some of the stories, as well as real-time results that showcased breaking news above other results.

Disclaimer

Thank you to Bing and Technorati for being sponsors of this article. All opinions expressed here are my own.

* Based on a comparison of web search results pane only; excludes ads, Bing’s Snapshot and Social Search panes and Google’s Knowledge Graph. Learn about the study.

Author

A technology, gadget and video game enthusiast that loves covering the latest industry news. Favorite trade show? Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.