Bing has announced a number of changes designed to improve the user experience for searchers. The Bing UK team said that the service improvements include faster page loading times and a greater relevance in search results, as well as some cosmetic changes to how search results are displayed.
This includes removing information from the left side of the page – where Google places links to additional vertical search options, such as news, video and images – which Microsoft said would make the search experiences more consistent and optimized for touch devices.
“We want to make your search experience quicker and easier so you can get on with the important stuff,” added Peter Maxmin, head of Bing UK.
Bing is no doubt hoping the changes can improve its global search market share. Last year, Bing overtook Yahoo to become the second most used search engine on the web, according to StatCounter. As of June, Bing accounted for 3.27 percent of the world’s search queries with long-time market leader Google way out in front with 91.75 percent of global search queries.
Microsoft clearly has designed on Google’s market, though, with the firm announcing a deal with Chinese search company Baidu earlier this month, a move that could help its Bing engine gain a far larger market share.
Earlier this year, Bing also unveiled a big redesign, adding a new social sidebar that includes links from an array of social media sites including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ for search results.
This article was originally published on V3.