Microsoft's new search engine has been officially unveiled by the software company.
Originally codenamed Kumo, the Bing "decision engine" aims to approach web search in a different way to other services by providing direct answers to users' queries as well as lists of website links.
It also highlights the best match for each query and allows users to preview a particular site's content by hovering over the link with their cursor without leaving the search engine.
Results are organised through a number of different panes and windows and Bing has additionally been developed to focus on providing answers to queries in the fields of shopping, travel, local business and information, and health-related research.
Bing uses entity extraction and expansion, query intent recognition and document summarisation technology to return results.
The search engine will be made available at Bing.com over the next few days and will be officially deployed around the world by June 3rd.
Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, said: "Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they've found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions."
Shar VanBoskirk of Forrester Research suggested that the launch could bring about a new approach to search engine optimisation for marketers as they may have to tweak website content to fit into specific subcategories rather than optimise it with particular keywords.
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