Microsoft has plumped up Bing with Visual Search, a Silverlight-powered add-on that returns search results based on images instead of text. Visual Search allows users to use images instead of text to generate search results. A user can initiate a search for Laptops, for example, by clicking on an image in the Visual Search gallery. That generates hundreds of Laptops images; the user can click on any one of them for further investigation or narrow the results using one-click filters — such as manufacturer, format or category — found to the left of the main screen.

Introduced as a beta, Visual Search will become available to users on a rolling basis over the month, with general availability expected by the end of September.

Bing will be at the heart of the Microsoft-Yahoo search advertising partnership, which is currently under regulatory review. Although it claims a relatively small share of the market, every incremental advance it makes appears to be coming at the expense of its huge rivals.