Microsoft unveiled a twist on the Internet search experience last week with a new feature which allows web surfers to search using image galleries instead of text links.
Microsoft, which teamed up with Yahoo! in July in a bid to challenge Google,rolled out a beta version of the feature at the TechCrunch50 technology con-ference in San Francisco.
Microsoft senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi described "Visual Search", which is being built into the company's search engine Bing, as a "more graphical way to search and discover information".
"Visual Search" allows users to conduct certain searches faster than the traditional image search offered by rival Google and other search engines.
Microsoft said a study found that consumers can process results with images 20 percent faster than text-only results.
"It's like searching through a large online catalogue," Microsoft said.
The feature currently offers galleries in nearly 50 categories from consumer products to holidays to movies to music.
A search at bing.com/visualsearch for "digital cameras," for example, returns a gallery of thumbnails of digital cameras which can then be filtered by manufacturer or price.
A search for books displays an image gallery which can be refined with filters such as author or category.
Google is the overwhelming leader in a web search and advertising market which the research firm Forrester estimates will grow by 15 percent a year to more than 30 billion dollars in 2014 in the United States alone.
But with their tie-up announced in July, Microsoft and Yahoo! are hoping to steal market share - and advertising dollars - from Google.
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