Bing Autosuggest Now Pulls from History

Bing has just launched improvements to its autosuggest functionality. When you start typing in the search  box on Bing.com, the autosuggest function – which previously just suggested words and phrases based on popular searches – now prompts you with words and phrases from your own search history, too. According to a post on the Bing Search Blog, this change was made because many search tasks span multiple search sessions that last for days or even weeks.  In fact, they found that 44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week. In other words, a lot of the things you search for, you’re going to search for again. And again and again and again. By providing those searches to you just a click away, you can get to the info you need faster.

To differentiate your queries from the other autosuggestions (is that a word?), your items will appear in purple – the same color as a previously visited link. The other search suggestions appear in blue as always.

Of course, if you don’t want your searches appearing here, you can simply switch your History off using the “Manage History” option. Alternately, you can use IE8’s private browsing mode to make sure nothing is recorded.