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Google’s just rolled out two new features — answer highlights in search results and rich snippets for events — in the ongoing process to improve the underlying technology and functionality of its core product: Search.

While the technology behind these updates is quite sophisticated, the actual purpose is simple: to actually provide answers instead of just results to your Google search queries.

The first new feature, answer highlighting, attempts to complete your search query by bolding the answer in the result. So now when you search, results will include bold words that Google deems to be the answer. This is a nifty little development — powered by Google Squared research — that’s especially handy and convenient, as prior to the feature update Google was simply bolding search keywords.

As Google admits, answer highlighting won’t work with all your queries, but it is very effective with searches around information that could fit in a table. Hence the inspiration and use of Google Squared data. Try it out on “empire state height” and you should actually get the height of the Empire State Building in bold at the top of the results page.

The second update — rich snippets for events — is more for webmasters, but the net benefit is that Google will now better answer your event-related queries. Should webmasters annotate their pages to support the new format, you’ll find that your event search will return more pertinent data. So results with events will show all events as snippets under the master listing broken up into individual links that highlight the event name, date and location.

Both of these updates are subtle on the surface and will probably go unnoticed by the average searcher. Should the newly applied technology work as promised, however, these updates could help continue to distinguish Google Search from all the rest.

It isn’t even December over yet, but Microsoft’s Bing search engine is already announcing its top ten most searched topics of 2009, as well as the two celebrities that were binged more than actress Megan Fox.

The new Microsoft “decision engine” has only been in service since June, but Bing has apparently analyzed billions of search queries in order to create a list of the ten most searched topics of the year, Bing’s version of “trending topics.” Six of the top ten searches referred to specific individuals while only one search term referred to a website or company.

As you’ve probably guessed, we’re talking about Twitter, whose rapid ascent into the mainstream garnered it the honor of being the #2 most searched topic on Bing.

So who or what was #1? Here are the top ten Bing searches of 2009, in reverse order:

The Top 10

10. Jaycee Dugard (kidnapped in 1991 and finally found in August of this year, the story was national news)

9. Billy Mays (famous pitchman who passed away in June)

8. Jon and Kate Gosselin (former stars of Jon and Kate Plus 8, the public destruction of their marriage was a big topic of interest)

7. Cash for Clunkers (a U.S. government program to replace less fuel efficient vehicles with newer, more fuel-economic cars)

6. Patrick Swayze (famous actor who passed away in September)

5. Farrah Fawcett (famous actress and pop culture icon who passed away in June)

4. Stock Market

3. Swine Flu

2. Twitter

And the number one searched term of 2009:

1. Michael Jackson

Social Media Has Captured the Public’s Attention

It’s not a shocker that any of these topics made the top ten Bing searches of 2009. There was an outpouring of interest in each and every one of these people or things. Still, Twitter being more searched than the stock market, Swine Flu, and every major public icon except Michael Jackson is an impressive feat that speaks to the mainstream reach Twitter now enjoys.

Bing also decided to release the top three most search living celebrities. While the inclusion of Transformers actress Megan Fox (#3) and Twilight () actor Robert Pattinson (#2) didn’t surprise us, we were a bit shocked to find that celebrity blogger Perez Hilton was the most searched living celebrity on Bing in 2009. No matter what you think of Perez, he proves that blogs have acquired incredible reach and captured the attention of the world.

What do you think of Bing’s top ten searches of 2009? Does anything about this list surprise you? Are you shocked something didn’t make the list? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.