On Friday afternoon, I was able to play a bit with Bing Deep Search, Microsoft's "enhancement" to Bing Search that provides a "deeper and richer exploration of the web." And honestly, my quick impression was that I was not too impressed, mostly because some results were not returned and because it took about a full minute for it to provide results.
Mikhail Parakhin from Microsoft said they are still testing it.
Microsoft announced Deep Search on December 5, 2024 and has since then not provided much of an update outside saying one day it might come to Bing Chat/Copilot when it gets faster. But I have not seen many people see Deep Search in the wild since. That is until Friday afternoon.
On Friday afternoon, after Shameem Adhikarath spotted it in the wild, I tried and I also was able to see it, so I wrote up my quick thoughts on Search Engine Land.
We knew Bing Deep Search was super slow but I didn't realize how slow that really was. It took over a minute for most searches and some of the searches I tried return a response that read "Sorry, I can't help with that" and I should "Search for something else."
Here are some screenshots I grabbed of my searches:
I no longer see this Deep Search icon - I suspect they released this feature too widely on Friday afternoon and pulled it back shortly after.
Here is where it is generating an answer (really giving you query refinements in a smarter way):
Look to the right, I searched for Bing and it told me these options on the right, so I selected "AI Chat":
For [search engine optimization] it did not give me a response:
But for SEO companies it did:
Glenn Gabe also played with it and he wrote, "I've been testing this with several queries. It's terrible IMO. It took over a minute per query (yes over 60 seconds to get results), failed several times (returning a blank screen with an error message), and when results were returned, I didn't really understand the difference between the default results and Deep Search. There is no way this can roll out in its current form. It's horrible. Nobody will use this. Nobody."
I've been testing this with several queries. It's terrible IMO. It took over a minute per query (yes over 60 seconds to get results), failed several times (returning a blank screen with an error message), and when results were returned, I didn't really understand the difference… https://t.co/wCXmCYV8Wg
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 2, 2024
He shared more examples:
@MParakhin I've been testing Deep Search. See this thread. Not sure what's going on there, but takes over 1 minute per query and fails like 80% of the time. There is no way this can go live. Just my 2 cents.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 2, 2024
Super-disappointed when testing Deep Search. If "deep" means blank screens and error pages, while waiting over a minute to see that, then I'll skip Deep Search next time. I know they are working on improving this, but I think it's a bit confusing for users now (even when it… https://t.co/1ztPpNasFR
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 5, 2024
Mikhail Parakhin from Microsoft responded to these threads:
We are testing it everywhere, the plan is to release everywhere, too.
— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) February 2, 2024
Why did it fail on some searches? Well, testing and debugging:
Got it. I think it's going to confuse many, many people. How do they know it's only for that type of query? Many will just click it, and wait forever. And then the SERPs don't look much different, and it's hard to know what Deep Search did versus a standard search. I would…
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 2, 2024
You can toggle over the search refinements to get more details:
And if you hovered over the toggle, it will show the longer explanation of the query interpretation.
— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) February 2, 2024
I am unsure if searchers will wait this long for a search response...
Forum discussion at X.
