Following the fine example of Yahoo! over the last month, Microsoft search engine Bing has overhauled their design and added two new features to improve results.

Bing's new features Pole Position and Page Zero create a deeper level of search, drawing together results from social networks as well as other media content. Uultimately like Yandex, offering personalised results as the user types their query to create a richer, more comprehensive search that can answer questions in real-time, retaining users to the Bing service.

"For example, if you type Katy Perry, we understand what you're looking for before you've even searched and give you a quick glance of who she is and suggest other popular search tasks associated with the singer," Lawrence Ripsher, Microsoft's general manager of user experiences at Bing.

 
But to the aesthetics. The new logo design, ditching the traditional blue in favour of a yellow hue, fits into Microsoft's brand family design, alongside fellow products Windows operating system, Outlook email client and Xbox entertainment.

The wholesale new design, coupled with new functionality, aims to close the gap between Google has built in U.S search traffic - 17.9% compared with Google's 67%.

"We spent months looking at ways to update the look of Bing to represent what the product offers today, while achieving visual parity with Microsoft's over-arching new look for the company. We worked with product, graphic and user experience designers to create a look that matches and grows with the product. 

"We built out mock ads, localized product examples for China and fictitious billboards to see what was working. From simple evolutions to ridiculous explorations, we learned something in each one.With principles and frameworks in hand, we looked at the art. We revisited the current logo and diagnosed what wasn't working. We looked at the new Microsoft identity and we did hundreds of studies to look at motion, font, colour, size and form.

"In the end, our new logo was created to be simple, real and direct."