Bing Updates Video Search

Bing released a number of changes to their Video Search results on March 29th geared primarily at how video results are presented in regular Web search. The new updates feature 16:9 ratio images, mouse-over pop-up video previews, and video length stamps on the preview images.

The above screen shot is an example for a search for Ted Nugent Videos in Bing Web Search which appeared right below a Bing News Listing. When you mouse over the preview thumbnail, Bing will often pop-up a small preview window and start playing the video. As of the time of this writing the pop-up happens for some videos and not for others. The pop-up says "No Preview Available" with the difference being the source of the video we believe. For example, most YouTube videos will auto play in the pop-up window, whereas a video hosted on a smaller site often has "No Preview Available".

Bing also updated their main video search results as well to include Infinite Scroll, an interesting and familiar feature that typically returns relevant videos at the top of the page, but gets increasingly irrelevant the further you scroll. For example, a search for Andy Jenkins Video (the video boss guy) the top results are decent, but scroll down a bit and you'll see videos for some not so relevant sources from sites such as video.virgilio.it that are totally out of left field.

While Infinite Scroll is a decent idea resulting in a nice interface for the user, it would seem to make sense to stop at some point when relevancy drops off a cliff. As in the universal search results, video search is also focusing on 16:9 ratio for the thumbnails as well.

Now, in our opinion here's the most interesting take away from this update. In video search for some queries, Bing has added common related search queries to the top of the p...