Bing set to ramp up in the UK

When bing.com was announced recently you may recall that while a full service was made available immediately in the US, a more limited beta service was provided in the UK while the team built out some UK-specific features so that the UK experience could be made as compelling as possible.

I spoke yesterday to the Core UK Product Manager for Bing, Sophie Salisbury, to ask where we were in the process of bringing Bing UK up to the level of the US service. Sophie explained that within the next few weeks we’ll start seeing some changes to the UK bing.com site:

• The first change you’ll notice is some more UK-specific (or certainly less US-specific) background pictures on bing.com. For example, we’ll start seeing pictures that relate to UK activities, holidays, events or topics of national interest
• The “hotspots” that appear on the US version will be introduced into the UK version, providing information and links related to aspects of the image.

A little later in the summer we’ll see some of the categorisation introduced, paving the way for the “full blown” bing experience and beta tag removal following that by a few months.

Bing is already pretty impressive even in its beta form so I’m really looking forward to be able to use it in its full glory in the UK. Stay tuned for more.

Bing “hotspot” feature soon to be making its way onto the UK homepage: