Microsoft search engine Bing has launched a beta of Visual Search, a form of search that lets users sift through image-based results, rather than links.
Once Silverlight is active, users can search across a number of categories — including shopping, sports or celebrities — and receive results instead of images back. Under shopping, for example, 10 different search boxes will yield a number of products for sale across the web, including digital cameras, books and cars.
Microsoft recently sealed a deal with Yahoo enabling Bing to power Yahoo’s search — meaning Bing now reaches about 30% of the US search market, versus Google’s 65% (via comScore).