Microsoft’s Bing Listens website started back in March to give users a way of letting the team behind the search engine build great features and enhancements to their Bing apps. Users can share their ideas to help make Bing better, vote on ideas they think are awesome, and share how they use Bing.
Over a million people have gone to Bing Listens, and thousands of ideas have been submitted. From new search filters or new ways to earn Bing Rewards, to advanced translation or medical features. Here are a few examples:
- More up-to-date public transit data in Bing Maps.
- The ‘My Places’ in Bing Maps now syncs with the Cortana virtual assistant.
- Unit settings have been added to weather.
- Shopping functionality has been added to Bing images.
- You may now receive notifications of Bing Rewards offer expirations.
Improvements to Bing Listens is also being made, including the ability for users to easily track the progress of ideas that have been submitted. Users will see the top three ideas submitted and the top three ideas currently being worked on right from the Bing Listens homepage. You can see all the ideas by category by clicking “see more”.
Microsoft is also working to make sure that all of Bing’s features are easily accessible, even to new users who aren’t familiar with Bing and all of its features. Examples include seeing only Popular Now searches, not recent searches; opening links from search results in a new browser window, and using quotation marks to search specific phrases.
Microsoft also wants to know how you use Bing in interesting and creative ways. You can let them know by using the “I use Bing to…” button.
With all that said, there isn’t any doubt that Bing could become more popular and powerful than Google. There are already areas where Bing is strong, and Google isn’t so much, including the fact that Bing can do handy things like tracking packages and providing great nutritional info for certain foods.
