bing.com.au
Sydney, Australia, Friday 10 July 2009: Following the much anticipated launch of Bing in June 2009, ninemsn is pleased to announce the next feature, Hot Spots, will arrive to Australia on Monday 13th July.
Already featuring a new daily image each day, Hot Spots will provide even more depth and interactivity to the
bing.com.au homepage in the form of clickable links scattered across each daily image. The links relate to trivia, statistics and unusual facts about the homepage image and the destination in general.
Alex Parsons, Director of MSN Products at ninemsn explains: "The Hot Spots appear when the mouse pointer hovers over them, creating a deeper sense of discovery within the Bing search engine. Clicking on the links will take the audience to different search destinations so they can continue learning about the place or event featured for the day."
The
bing.com.au homepage images will also be programmed locally in Australia from Thursday 16th July onwards enabling them to feature locations, activities and specific events affecting the nation. In July, the
bing.com.au homepage images will include depictions of the Bledisloe Cup, The Darwin Beer Can Regatta and the Melbourne International Film Festival.
"The beauty of a localised Bing.com.au homepage is we can show images specific to Australians that are more representative of our lifestyle and national mood. We also have the scope to change these images quickly to capture news events or topics of national interest as they occur. It is a fantastic way of visually reflecting the current environment," Parsons concluded.
Hot Spots are the first of many new Bing features scheduled to roll out over the coming months in Australia. They are another key differentiator for Bing that will be added to existing unique features, including:
- Instant answers – displays query answers directly within the search results page using text, images and video preview
- Best match – cleanly shows one result for popular navigational queries
- Hover preview – displays a summary of each site’s content directly from the results page
- Rich image search – allows infinite scroll of image results and extensive refinement options on just the one page
- Video thumbnail preview – plays an excerpt of the video content within the search results page.
Go to
bing.com.au to see the first set of Australian Hot Spots from Monday 13th July.
-ENDS-
