Bing takes on Trivago, Google with intelligent search features

A new update for Bing lets consumers view pricing trends, with the initial rollout focused around the travel and hospitality industry.

Functionally, the offering is similar to Google's ability to offer searchers historical price trends for specific date ranges in order to assist in price-based decisions. It's also conceptually similar to what Trivago offers for hotel seekers.

The price trend feature allows users to browse costs over a period of time, tied to a specific hotel. With this function, Bing intends to help users compare and contrast easily, with a user interface that allows multiple clicks to check the rates throughout a date range.

Available on both desktop and mobile, the new features are focused around the hospitality industry, including hotels and airlines. Similar to Trivago, the function also offers users a detailed breakdown of hotel prices, ratings, class levels, and amenities side-by-side.

Microsoft's recent repositioning around digital transformation and focus around injecting machine learning across all consumer products is behind the recent string of Bing updates, which also included a hotel booking feature launched in May. This offers users aggregated pricing from third-party booking sites.

According to the Q4 2018 report by Microsoft, search advertising revenue through Bing Ads increased by 13% to $793 million due to higher revenue per search and search volume. The search engine and pay per click products rely on partnerships for monetization with multiple companies such as Oath. The growth of the engine is dependent on the ability to attract new users, understand search intent, and match intent with relevant content and advertiser offerings.