Microsoft may start to test Bing's Deep Search features again in the wild after pulling back its testing earlier this month. As a reminder, Deep Search is an enhancement to Bing Search that provides "deeper and richer exploration of the web," Microsoft originally said.
Mikhail Parakhin from Microsoft said on X last night when asked about when Deep Search will return, "Back on a large flight (hopefully) this week. Much better!"
Here are those posts:
Back on a large flight (hopefully) this week. Much better!
— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) February 29, 2024
Microsoft pulled the test flights of Deep Search a few weeks ago after its initial test release was pretty poor. I was able to test Bing Deep Search in the wild and, well, it didn't go well, to say the least.
Earlier this month Mikhail Parakhin from Microsoft said, "It turned out to be more popular than we anticipated," that Microsoft initially "really though it is more of a research tool," but clearly many want to try it out beyond researchers. Parakhin said they "need to fix caching" and make Deep Search "more robust." He said it will be "coming back soon."
Well, now it looks like it will be back in the coming days.
Deep Search uses Bing's existing web and search index , plus its search ranking system but "enhances them with GPT-4," the company said. With Deep Search, GPT-4 inputs the search query and then expands that query into a "more comprehensive description of what an ideal set of results should include," they added. Deep Search aims to bring "back relevant results that often don't show up in typical search results." It does this by using "querying techniques" to find pages that might match an "expanded query, rewriting the query on my behalf, and searching for those variations too," they said.
Forum discussion at X.
