Microsoft enables animated GIF search on Bing

While some people find animated GIFs to be tacky and silly, I find them fun. Sure, many people use the images to flood social media with memes, but they also serve as a great way to show a short animation using a small file size. I often use them in things like PowerPoint presentations, as they jazz it up a bit and keep things exciting.

Searching for the perfect animated GIF can be problematic, as most images are not named as such, and unless the search engine gives an option, they may be mixed in with non-animated images too. Today, Bing gets even better, with the all-new option to filter image searches by animated GIF.

"In our quest to help our users hunting for image content with our last UX improvements, we are proud to unveil the work we’ve done to make searching for animated GIFs easier, and more fun. An animated GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a graphic image that takes a series of uploaded images and frames them together. The images run on a loop, making it appear like a movement or short animation", says The Bing Image Search Team.

The team further explains, "starting today, there’s an easier way to search for animated GIFs. When you do an image search, click on the 'Type' filter below the search box and then select 'Animated GIF'. The page will refresh to show just animated GIFs. Hovering on any of the images will play the animation right away, making it easy and fun for you to see the animation. You don’t have to filter your queries to find animated GIFs. Any result that is an animated GIF will have the below badge appear on the image, letting you know that the image will show animation on hover or click of the image".

Sometimes it's the little things that make a big difference, and this is one of them. Quite frankly, it falls under the "why wasn't this already implemented" category; better late than never, right?

Either way, this is just another in a long line of Bing improvements, and while Google is still the search champ, Microsoft shows no sign of giving up. It is exciting to think where Bing may be at this time next year -- hopefully Google is paying attention.

Photo Credit: Alexander Trinitatov / Shutterstock