Microsoft is rolling out a new feature in its search engine Bing called Visual Search. The feature is part of the company's effort to push search into new directions to differentiate Bing from Google, the market leader in search.

Visual Search, currently in a beta test phase, allows users to search visually, such as through a photo gallery of Major League Baseball players, instead of scrolling through text links.Users can then continue to narrow their search, such as "highest paid" players, then "shortstop." The feature requires users to download Silverlight, Microsoft's video software.

The feature is available in about 50 categories, including celebrities, movies, U.S. politicians, yoga poses, cellphones, digital cameras and pro athletes. To try it out, go to www.bing.com/visualsearch. When you enter a search term, an option appears in the left column of the page that says "Visualize (search term)." Sadly, "Visualize Ballard" is not one of the beta categories.

"The idea behind it was to present information to enable people to use very simple filters to sort through large amounts of information that previously were hard to get through on the Web," said Stefan Weitz, a directorat Bing.

I asked how the feature would help Microsoft make money from search, and Weitz said ithelps build up the Bing brand.

"We’re positioning Bing as a decision engine. This really is a faster way to make decisions. This is one of the more compelling ways we have to pay that vision off," he said.

Weitz said there will be more features coming out in the fall for Bing, although there will be no Bing 2.0 release in that period. Tweets coming from the annual employee meeting at Safeco Field last week hinted that there was a Bing 2.0 emerging.

Here is a video demo from Microsoft. Don't try to adjust your volume -- there is no sound other than keyboard clicks.