In the past decade, the number of Web sites has grown nearly 28 times, from just over 8 million sites to more than 230 million (October 2009 Web Server Survey, Netcraft). Netcraft also estimates that there are more than 300 billion Web pages, which host all manner of content from static Web pages to video, audio and social networking sites.
The availability of such a vast amount of information has drawn more people online to make decisions, whether day-to-day tasks or major business and household purchases. Although the type, scope and amount of online content has changed radically in the last decade, the tools we use to find information and make decisions have remained the same.
Microsoft realized the status quo left much to be desired, so in 2008 we conducted a series of studies to understand how people are using the Internet and search, and to find the areas most in need of improvement. From this understanding Bing was born.
Microsoft wanted to peel away the layers standing between a user and information. With that in mind, we designed Bing to provide direct access to relevant information, to deliver a more organized experience that helps people accomplish tasks faster and to simplify tasks and provide insight that helps lead them to more informed decisions.
When we launched Bing, we provided a search experience that was grounded in this understanding of consumer behavior and needs. Now we’re releasing the following new features and enhancements, which are designed to provide a more engaging search experience and transform information into knowledge:
Deliver Great Results
- Enhanced Auto-Suggest
- Real-Time Search
- Twitter
- Facebook (coming soon)
- Enhanced Preview
- Middle-of-Page Answers
- Enhanced Results
- Bing for Mobile
- Toolbars
- New Video Experience
Deliver a More Organized Experience
- Visual Search
- Cross-Session History
- Weather/Event Results
- City Slideshow
- Search Sharing
- Bing Maps (beta)
Simplify Key Tasks
- Local
- Shopping
- Travel
- Health - Wolfram Alpha Results
On the surface, the Bing Home Page may appear similar to others — a single search box as a starting point, surrounded by colorful or currently relevant imagery. But click deeper and you’ll discover so much more.
Searchers often don’t know about the range of content engines can fetch for them. The Home Page, with its rich imagery, informational hotspots, and clear and prominent links for images, video, news and products, helps searchers choose the best scope for their query.
Try it: Hover over one of the hot spots on the Home Page to be taken to a fact you likely didn’t know.
Enhanced Auto-Suggest
Bing automatically suggests similar terms or common refinements that searchers have used in the past or that Bing knows are related to the term you’re typing. Now, Bing takes this one step further by anticipating and suggesting terms throughout the process, regardless of whether you’re initiating a search or refining it with specific locations, flight or lodging information. In addition, Bing has greatly expanded the Auto-Suggest vocabulary to help narrow choices quickly and highlight previous queries in purple to make it easy to get back to a past search.
Why: Nearly 50 percent of all queries are refined at some point in the process. People often don’t know what words to use, evidenced by the fact that 30 percent of people use this feature to help them search.
Try it: Go to http://www.bing.com, and start typing “mahog” or “lexmark x” to see how Auto-Suggest can make the task of typing your query easier. Once you click on “Lexmark x4270” go back to the query box and start typing “lex.” You’ll see your previous query in purple.
Microsoft applied the same objective to the ease of finding information when it developed Best Match. Rather than getting lost in the midst of all the other search results, Bing makes the best result stand out from all the others. Best Match is designed to bring the most helpful information from the most authoritative sites for your query — a top user request to help prevent disappointment. Recently, we’ve doubled the size of Bing’s search index to ensure that we offer up the results you’re looking for.
For example, suppose you’re looking for the UPS site so you can track that package you’re expecting. After you enter a search query for UPS, Bing delivers the results and highlights the result most closely matching your query at the top, under the heading Best Match. Best Match also has innovative features to help save time and clicks, including the following:
- Customer service numbers and hours of operation for retail and service sites
- Deep search (so you can track that UPS package directly from your search result)
- Sites Like This to help you navigate to other sites similar to your query
- Deep Links so you can easily get to the task you’re trying to perform in the site
- In
cases where Bing is nearly sure there is a single, best answer for a
query, it hides the Web links to present a clean, clear page that gets
you to your destination quickly. Getting to the full Web results page
is just a click away.
Why: Nearly half of all queries are navigational, meaning a person is looking for a particular site or service on the Web. In cases like UPS, 90 percent of the time people are simply going to this site to track a package. We asked how we could make it easier for them to cut through the clicks and complete their task.
Try it: Enter “Target,” “UPS” or “Facebook” in the search box.
Deep Links enable users to see inside the site without having to click into it and learn a new site structure. With Bing, we focused on the quantity and quality of Deep Links. And with the exception of the Best Match result, Bing orients Deep Links for the rest of the results horizontally to conserve precious screen real estate, while still providing the direct, deep information access people are asking for. We’ve also expanded the “Deep Links” coverage 10 percent in this release.
Why: Deep Links are one of the top drivers of satisfaction on a search results page, in part because they greatly reduce the frequency of bad clicks.
Try it: Enter “Samsung,” “Seattle Times” or “Engadget.”
Bing also includes a feature that takes the captions you see beneath a search result a step further. Hovering over a search result reveals a window of expanded text and deep links to give you a better sense of whether a site contains the information you’re looking for without taking up valuable real estate on the search page.
Now, for select queries, Bing provides an actual snapshot of the home page of the site, along with direct, clear customer service information that uses entity extraction to automatically find it (where relevant) and a “search within this site” box so you can do a targeted search of content on the site in question. Popular links that we see people going to often once they arrive at the site are also often brought forth into the preview. Last, we noticed that not everyone saw the activation mechanism for Enhanced Preview, so we made it more obvious and changed the wording to enable people to understand what we are providing. Finally, for video pages, we’ve included video smart motion thumbnails right in the preview.
We’ve also added Enhanced Preview for Facebook pages so you can see a snapshot of a friend or acquaintance, find out who is part of their Facebook network and send them a message or friend request.
Why:
Twenty-four percent of clicks result in a rapid click back, meaning that people submit a query, get a results page, click on a link and realize it isn’t what they are looking for and rapidly click back. Offering rich previews was designed to eliminate the need for rapid click backs. Since we’ve launched Bing, 42 percent of our users say it reduces unnecessary clicks, and 21 percent of queries have a preview experience.
Try it:
- Enter a search query for “Oprah.”
- Bing
will bring up search results, and when you hover over the right side of a search result,
it displays a new activation metaphor on the right side of the screen.
- Moving your cursor to the plus reveals a snapshot of her Web site, including a snapshot of the home page, popular links, a search box so you can search within her site, and more.
- Next try “Harvest Vine.” Do the same as above and note the ability for Bing to find the address, reservation number, and popular links to help you more quickly.
- You can then connect to the Web site from within the preview window by clicking on “Go to the Page.”
A great decision engine knows when to get out of your way and when to get you an answer quickly. With that in mind, the Bing team focused on expanding Answers. For example, you might need to pick up your significant other from the airport but want to know if the flight is on time. No problem. Simply enter your flight number (“UA875”), and Bing will pull the most recent flight information and display it prominently in the results, saving you the hassle of going to a separate page. Instant Answers are available for a variety of other topics and scenarios, such as checking stock prices or figuring out the area code of the number that keeps calling your cell phone.
In addition, Bing can often leverage your physical location to answer these queries. No longer do you have to type “Boston Traffic” — simply type “traffic” when you’re sitting at your office and you will be presented with a geographically relevant answer where applicable.
Lastly, Bing introduces Active Answers, which enable you to actually interact with the Answer on the search results page. Think of these as very simple mini applications that enable you to get what you need without having to make a potentially bad click.
Why: Again, nearly a quarter of clicks result in an almost-instantaneous return to the search results page. If we can reduce the chance of a bad click, consumers can make the most of their online time.
Try it: Enter “traffic,” “weather,” “206,” “MSFT,” “Veterans Day” and “movies.” For Active Answers, try “free stock quotes,” “flight status,” “English dictionary” and then enter an appropriate query into the text box. Note how the answer appears in line with the search results.
With the next release of Bing we’ve enhanced our search results to promote answers into the query results when we think they could be helpful based on user data from previous, similar queries. We think this is an innovative way to continue providing access to knowledge rather than simply offering more information without mitigating the risk of user dissatisfaction from providing wrong information.
Search engines have long been inadequate at anticipating the motivation behind or context within which you look for particular information. Bing breaks new ground in this area with Enhanced Results, a collection of task-relevant search results that are prominently placed and give you one-click access to relevant information.
With Bing’s Enhanced Results, rather than making multiple search refinements to find what you’re looking for, you can quickly access your information and complete the task at hand. And there are Enhanced Results to address a number of common tasks, such as finding Coldplay’s latest releases or latest music video (Entertainment), verifying your choice of hostpial (Health), checking the weather for your weekend getaway to Chicago (City) or researching the best deal on a great SLR camera (Shopping). We take structured data from across the web and augment the answers to bring “more of the information” to the top rather than make you click and try to find it across the web. In this release of Bing, the following information areas are augmented with this new intelligence:
- Cities
- Hospitals
- Products
- Artists, Celebrities
Try it: Enter “Coldplay”, “Chicago”, “Swedish Medical Center” and “Nikon D90.” Notice how the grouping of results for each search provides you with quick access to information that allows you to take action.
Quickly see what’s popular in the world and across the Web using Microsoft’s exclusive xRank technology. Combining raw Web searches with our ranking formula, you can quickly see what’s hot and what’s moving across the world. Once you click, you’re presented with graphs of the topic’s historical interest along with a multimedia rich results page.
Try it: Enter “Britney Spears” on the Home Page. Then, click on xRank in the Explore Pane.
Bing is merging real-time content with Web search technology to present compelling new search results for our users. Bing now helps you make better decisions by collecting, analyzing and uniquely presenting real-time content from Twitter — and soon, Facebook.
When it comes to staying connected and informed on current events in real time, many of us turn to Twitter. It’s become a treasure trove of timely and socially relevant information. Now Bing has indexed the entire Twittersphere to enable people to easily search Twitter’s real-time information feed directly in Bing.
The new Twitter results in Bing include the following:
- The new results give a real-time index of the tweets that match your search queries in results. This feature makes it easier to follow what is going on by reducing the amount of duplicates, spam and adult content.
- The results give you the option of ranking tweets either by most recent or by best match, where we consider a Twitter user’s popularity, the level of interest in their tweets, and other indicators of their quality and trustworthiness.
- The results provide the top links shared on Twitter around your specific search query by showcasing a few of the most relevant tweets. In addition, Bing automatically expands small URLs (such as bit.ly) to help you to understand what people are tweeting about. Instead of showing standard search result captions, we select two top tweets to give users a glimpse of the sentiment around the shared link.
In short, Bing turns the mass of Twitter feeds into something you can easily use.
Why: Twitter has become a valuable source of real-time information. However, with 50 million users, it’s become to difficult to navigate Twitter and isolate tweets with relevance, substance and value from random tweets that are best described as static.
Try it: Go to http://www.bing.com/twitter and search for “Obama” or a timely topic to see the real-time results appear.
Recently, Bing announced a global partnership with Facebook that will bring public Facebook status updates to Bing search results. This partnership illustrates Bing’s commitment to real-time search innovation and we look forward to integrating Facebook data into our search results in the months ahead.
As mentioned earlier, roughly 72 percent of people consider search results too disorganized, leading to errant searches, bad links and search sessions that are needlessly long.
To provide some order to the chaos, for many types of queries, Bing analyzes the search results and organizes them so they’re easy to navigate, regardless of how many results it serves up. The result? Web Groups — a categorizing of results that provides structure to what had essentially been a set of blue links.
In addition, a consistent user experience across Web, video, images, shopping, travel, health and other Bing services will prevent users from having to learn a new user interface for each type of query — something many of today’s engines require. In much the same way Microsoft Office brought together different applications under a single user interface, the Bing user experience framework consolidates all the tools people use for search in a single place across the search experience — the Explore Pane located on the left rail.
In the Explore Pane you’ll find a variety of search tools including Quick Tabs — essentially a table of contents for the result categories, Related Searches and Session History, as well as other tools specific to the type of search you’re doing.
In Bing we introduce a concept called Categorized Search. Clearly, not every query fits into a categorization schema, but the results of a large percentage of queries can be categorized to optimize the retrieval of information. Traditionally, many engines have optimized around being a keyword-to-URL mapping tool and designed their user experiences as such. Where they have fallen down is in not enabling a user to explore a topic or find a variety of sources and insights from the Web in an organized manner.
Categorized Search helps users organize their search in a number of ways — namely, by increasing the authority and diversity of results.
- Authority: Categorized Search can boost the delivery of results from authoritative results to users. For health queries, for example, content from the Mayo Clinic or the Center for Disease Control and Prevention can be delivered ahead of a person’s blog or doctor’s Web site.
- Diversity:Often results on a page are overinfluenced by search-engine optimization and tend to be of a particular type. Insurance queries, for example, are dominated by rate compare sites and providers rather than articles and other background information. Categorized Search helps circumvent this tendency by showing results in groups that add diversity to a page.
Categorized Search can also reduce the time and effort of wading through hundreds of links. Bing does this by grouping the top search results into categories known as Web Groups, which are based on the most frequently used refinements for a given search topic. Web Groups appear when a term falls into one of our many covered categories and they change in response to the query. For example, a city term may include weather, airport, restaurants and hotel groups, while a celebrity may include biography, movies, images and video. In addition, Microsoft is integrating our Powerset technology directly into Web Groups where appropriate. Look for the Reference Group to see how Powerset technology makes it easy to get to the most relevant information about the topic you’re researching.
Why: According to a Microsoft-commissioned survey, only 32 percent of search queries are sufficiently organized, so organizational tools such as Web groups break down the results in a manner relevant to the topic. And Web Groups also help you track the types of results you’re viewing and easily navigate to what you’re looking for while scrolling from page to page of results.
Try it: Enter “Hyundai Sonata,” “U2,” “Robbie Williams,” “diabetes,” “Desperate Housewives” or “megamouth shark” and scroll through the search results. Note how they are categorized into sections. You can expand any of the sections simply by clicking on the header.
The Current List of Web Group Topics
Bing delivers Web Groups for a variety of query topics (below). We’ll add additional galleries to this list over time in response to what people are searching for and doing with Bing:
- Automobiles (car models, car manufacturers)
- Travel/local (countries, cities, states and points of interest such as stadiums, parks and passes)
- People (celebrities, athletes, musicians, bands, politicians, etc.)
- Sports (teams from the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB)
- Health (cancer, diet, over-the-counter and prescription drugs, symptoms, genetic and conditional disease, injury trauma)
- Entertainment (popular television shows and movies)
- Retail (certain electronics such as camera, cell phones and optics products)
- Events (Oscars, Fourth of July, NASCAR, etc.)
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Sometimes it’s difficult putting into words exactly what you’re looking for. Rather than making multiple attempts at providing just the right words, you can use Visual Search to refine your query — even when you’re not quite sure how to phrase what you’re looking for. Whether looking for an upcoming movie, your favorite breed of dog or the noble gases on the periodic table of elements, you can find them easily using Visual Search. So far, we’ve added more than 100 galleries to Bing Visual Search, and more are being added each day.
Try it: Click on the “Visual Search” link on the Bing home page (or at the top of a results page) and select “Entertainment.” Each classification is split up into smaller galleries, such as “Movies in Theatres,” “Top Songs” and “Billboard’s Past Songs.” Using the classifications, related galleries and refinements on the left-hand side, you can quickly find what you're looking for.
How about selecting a great destination for your vacation? Say you have four days to travel next weekend and don’t want to spend more than eight hours on a plane for your short beach vacation in the Caribbean. Type “travel” in Bing, click on “beaches and sun” and pick “8hrs maximum travel time” with your mouse. You’ve reduced the amount of choices significantly.
Why: Research shows that people process search results with visual cues 28 percent faster than they do with text alone. In addition, there are simply classes of queries whose results are more suited to visual representation than a static list of links. Large data sets that contain multiple ways of viewing the data are particularly suited to this method of exploratory queries.
Entertainment
- 100 Heroes and Villains
- Billboard’s Past Albums
- Billboard’s Past Songs
- Film Legends
- Greatest Movies
- Movies in Theatres
- Popular Books
- Popular Celebrities
- Popular DVDs
- Popular TV Shows
- Pulitzer Winning Fiction
- Top Albums
- Top Songs
Famous People
- FBI’s Most Wanted
- U.S. Politicians
- U.S. Presidents
- U.S. Vice Presidents
- World Leaders
Reference
- Dog Breeds
- Periodic Table
- S&P 500 Stocks
- Travel Destinations
- U.S. States
- Yoga Poses
Shopping
- Cell Phones
- Digital Cameras
- Handbags
- HDTVs
- New Cars
- Portable GPS
- Top iPhone Apps
Sports
- MLB Players
- MLB Teams
- NASCAR Drivers
- NBA Players
- NBA Teams
- NFL players
- NFL teams
- NHL players
- NHL teams
- UFC fighters
Running up the left side of the screen, the Explore Pane includes a table of contents of the various Web Groups generated by your query (called Quick Tabs), followed by a list of links to Related Searches and the past searches in your Session History. In addition, the Explore Pane changes its function based on what you’re searching for. As you’ll see in the video and image example, common refinements appear in the pane when searching within those scopes. When querying for news, products or local information, the contents of the Explore Pane change to reflect the most common tasks the user has to perform to get to their answer.
Let’s take a look at the most common set of features that will appear in the Explore Pane when searching.
Quick Tabs offer easy access to the Web Groups relevant to your search. These tabs put the most common refinements for your query term at the top left of the Explore Pane. The Quick Tab elements map to the Web Groups throughout the results page. Clicking on any of the elements will automatically execute a query focused just on the Quick Tab refinement.
Why: We know that nearly half of all queries are refined at some point during a search session. Quick Tabs and Web Groups help users understand the nature of available information at a glance and enable them to easily narrow down their query and get to the results they care about.
Try it:
- Enter
a search query of “San Francisco,” which returns a list of results
categorized by several Web Groups, including “map,” “airport,”
“restaurants,” “hotels” and “weather.”
- Click on “airport,” filtering out all the results not related to the San Francisco airport.
- Then select “images” to narrow the results just to images about San Francisco.
- Then select “video” to deliver the video experience within the search user interface.
- Hover
over a video to play snippets of the content, or click on the video to
watch the clip in its entirety on the hosting Web site.
Viewing Images and Video in Bing
- Unlike many competitors’ sites, the Infinite Scroll feature in Bing eliminates pagination of image search results, so you don’t have to wait for the next page to load.
- Bing also allows you to filter the images and video based on a variety of factors. Images can be filtered by size, aspect ratio, color, style and face (whether it’s a close-up, a head-and-shoulders shot, or something entirely different). Video can be filtered by duration, aspect ratio, resolution or source.
- There are more than 16 million videos in the Bing index, and it pulls the video from several sources, including MSN, AOL, MTV, ESPN, YouTube, MySpace, Daily Motion, Metacafe and Hulu. You can also search for and view full-length episodes of CBS programming via Hulu, as well.
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Related Searches is another refinement tool in the Explore Pane. Based on your query, Related Searches provides a list of queries that are relevant to your topic.
For example, a query for “U2” will return a list of searches related to their videos, as well as other entertainment celebrities with whom they’ve been associated. The list of Related Searches appears below the Quick Tabs in the Explore Pane, providing a convenient tool to expand or adjust your search terms if you don’t like your results or simply want to exercise your curiosity.
Why: Many times users don’t know what words to use in their query, especially topics in which they are not experts. Related Searches presents a list of multidimensional refinements that can help users narrow their query without knowing a great deal about the topic on which they are searching.
Try it: Enter “diabetes” and look at Related Searches. Note terms that go beyond simple query modifications (such as hypoglycemia) and modifications that help narrow down your specific query (such as type 2 diabetes).
The initial release of Bing allowed you to save search history from within a single browser session for up to 48 hours, making it easy to track your past queries, the results you clicked on and even the time you accessed a link. However, our research found that nearly half of all search sessions are spread out over multiple queries that span multiple days. With that in mind, Bing now allows you to save your history from previous search sessions so you don’t have to retrace your ‘steps’ and cover the same ground again. Bing will also give you complete control of your history by allowing you to adjust the length of time for which it is saved, turn Search History off, clear the contents of Search History, or just remove individual items from Search History.
And as always, you can use our enhanced My Search Folders view to save your searches in a local folder on your machine for future reference or to your Windows Live SkyDrive folders (when logged into Bing with your Windows Live ID), where you can access them from any computer with Internet access. As well, you can easily share your saved searches on Facebook, with your Windows Live contacts, or through e-mail simply by clicking on the icons on your My Search Folders page.
Why: Nearly 50 percent of searches are repeats, and 5 percent of queries make up almost 47 percent of the time spent searching. Session History provides a way to remember the work you’ve done online so you can spend more time finding new information.
Try it:
- Click on the “manage” link underneath the list of previous search queries at the bottom of the Explore Pane.
- The history management page appears. From here you can browse through past searches, the clicked sites and the time, identify the query you’re looking for, and click on the link to pick up where you left off.
To help you make decisions quicker, Bing now aggregates content from around the Web into new experiences. We are initially focusing on two experiences that often involve decision making — weather and event planning. Weather/Event Results can integrate content such as data from sources across the Web, news, events, xRank results, Twitter feeds, images and Best Match results onto one page all designed to reduce the amount of time you have to hunt through a list of links to accomplish a task. And by providing you with results from multiple resources, you get a more accurate picture of the available information to help you make a more informed decision. Current Weather/Event Results categories include weather and events. You can expect to see a number of new experiences that map to what people are doing on the Web, and these experiences will “light up” over the next several months.
Weather is a top 10 search as over 67 million people a day search for the weather forecast so they can make daily decisions such as what to wear to work or if they should walk or drive. Understanding that this is an important domain for our users, we created Weather Results. Bing’s Weather Results include forecasts from multiple sources, and they also track the most accurate sources for you so that you know which forecast to trust.
Events is another area where Bing helps users to more quickly access information they need to accomplish a task. We’re introducing Events Results, which list events in specific cities, dates/venues for bands and musicals.
Why: Reducing time to task is the No. 1 most requested feature from our users. We noticed that when people got into task mode such as trying to figure out weekend weather, they would go to multiple sources to try to find different pieces of data to help make their decision. By understanding user behavior when conducting tasks, we were able to develop a framework that enables users to go to one place to get more of the information they need to make a decision.
Try it: Search for “New York,” and click on the weather link in the answer. For events, search for “Wicked” and click on events.
To help get you closer to places you care about, the next release of Bing will feature beautiful Silverlight-powered slideshows for select cities. With easy access from our Enhanced Result, simply click on the city graphic to witness the city in all its glory.
Why: People are asking more often for a visual experience when engaging in their search sessions. City Slideshows are a first step in creating an in-context visual experience that can bring people more knowledge about their query.
Try it: Enter “Chicago” as your search, and click on the city graphic with “Slideshow” in it.
The past few years have brought some amazing advances in imagery and mapping technology, including 45-degree aerial photographs, street-level points of view and three-dimensional virtual environments such as Microsoft PhotoSynth. Now Bing Maps (beta) is combining these advances into Streetside, an online mapping experience that immerses you in your virtual surroundings from the vantage point of actually being on a particular street corner or in the lobby of a certain building.
Streetside delivers a seamless viewing experience that can transition from a satellite image to a 45-degree aerial view, to a street-level view and finally to a multidimensional image of your virtual surroundings, whether the expanses of Central Park, the interior of Grand Central Station or some other user-generated experience available on the PhotoSynth Web site. Photosynth and Silverlight are the underlying technologies in Bing Maps that connect everything and help provide the more seamless experience. Based on Seadragon and Photo Tourism concepts, Photosynth lets us “stitch” together photographs to provide more realistic view of locations as they appear in real life.
The new Streetside feature will include three-dimensional, street-level imagery for 56 U.S. metro areas with a combined population of 125 million, adding to the customer experience by providing rich immersive views of select cities. In addition, we’ve started collecting street-level images on public roads, primarily in commercial areas in Canada, near sites associated with the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, including the Vancouver and Whistler areas.
Real-time information is of increasing interest to our customers, and we’ve been excited by the feedback we’re hearing about integration of Twitter search in Bing. Now with our new Twitter application in Bing Maps (beta), we’re providing real-time information that provides additional context for your mapping queries. For example, you can see the latest tweets regarding the local shopping mall before heading out. It’s our latest effort to bring you real-time content you in a way that helps you accomplish key tasks.
Because Bing Maps (beta) features an application programming interface (API), you can create software applications that harness the visual imagery of Streetside and the geographic information it affords. It’s an ideal opportunity for integrating applications and services based on our Bing Maps platform.
Recently, we structured the terms of use so developers can conduct 125,000 sessions per year at no charge. Using Bing Maps’ Silverlight Light Control, you can build your own online and desktop applications that support multimedia, spatial search, and vivid imagery such as fly-through, deep zoom and continuous panning of the surrounding area.
Search engines have always been more about helping you find information, and less about putting that information to use. Microsoft set out to change that with Bing. Through the research, we identified the following as areas where people wanted more assistance in accomplishing tasks and making decisions: shopping; researching the symptoms of an illness; making travel arrangements; and looking for local restaurants, entertainment and other activities.
There’s no question the Internet has become an indispensible tool for getting things done. Microsoft found that 66 percent of people surveyed have grown accustomed to using the Internet as a vehicle for completing tasks and a source of information for making decisions.
Unfortunately, many search engines are more useful in helping you find information, and less useful in helping you use that information to make decisions. We set out to change that with Bing by creating a decision engine optimized for shopping, local search, travel and healthcare — the most frequent tasks or types of decisions on the Internet.
Everyone appreciates a good deal, and online is typically the best place to start looking. Unfortunately, finding the best deal online can sometimes be just as tedious as bargain hunting brick-and-mortar style. Bing takes the online shopping experience a step further through tools that help you scour the Internet for customer and expert reviews, search for a product based on a variety of features and characteristics, find the best deal available online, and even get cash back with your purchase.
Now, we’re providing enhanced search results that offer a more complete answer within the results page — such as product specs, user reviews and price comparisons. Part of that includes incorporating instant answers into the search results. The combination of Bing’s initial shopping experience and tools in this release provides all the information you need at your fingertips, so you can make an informed purchase decision in a snap.
Other enhancements in the shopping experience include being able to refine by seller once you perform a shopping search and being able to browse by category rather than just product.
Why: Users tell us they want answers more than just information. Especially when there is a definitive answer, augmenting the results to enable people to accomplish their task more quickly — whether it’s just research or trying to make a purchase — is a key feature of Bing.
Try it: Search for “Nikon D90.”
Home Page
There are two ways to launch your product search from the Bing Home Page: Clicking on the shopping link will take you directly to the Bing Shopping Home Page, from which you can search for a product. Alternatively, you can start a search query in the search window of the Bing Home Page.
Try it:
- Enter a search for “digital camera” from the Bing Home Page.
- Click
on the shopping Quick Tab in the Explore Pane, which subsequently takes
you to a Bing Shopping page where all the digital cameras are sorted
by Best Match.
- Alternatively, click on the shopping link from the Bing Home Page.
- Enter “digital camera” in the search window on the Bing Shopping Home Page.
Product Search
Search results on the Bing product listings page are automatically sorted by best match, but can also be sorted by price, user rating and expert rating. Bing Shopping also provides search refinement tools in the Explore Pane to help in your search. The Explore Pane for product search is divided into four categories: product category, brand, price and whether a product qualifies for Bing cashback. Each of these is dissected further, allowing you to filter products based on a specific price range, preferred brand and particular characteristic or feature.
Try it:
- Using the same search for “digital camera,” select “$75-100” as the price range.
- Select “Olympus” as the brand.
On the right side, see the “Popular Features“ heading that shows you for that product category what most popular considerations people are using when purchasing these products. Click on “Photo Quality,” and you will be taken to a listing of Olympus cameras that have a high user rating for photo quality.
Opinion Ranking
Clicking on a particular product surfaces the product details page, where one of the first things you’ll notice is the link to user reviews and expert reviews (along with product details and compare prices). To provide these rankings, Bing scours the Web for consumer product reviews and also relies on the expertise of partners such as CNET. A product’s overall ranking is visible on the product listings page, but clicking on “User Reviews” (on the product details page) provides a much more nuanced assessment of a product based on each of its features using comments from users across the Web. The sentiment extraction capability in Bing can give you a very detailed look at how one particular feature stacks up against the competition. Bing does all this so you don’t have to go to each of the opinion sites and read lengthy opinions about a product’s positive or negative features.
Try it:
- Using the same filtered “digital camera” search results, select the camera of your choice.
- From the product details page, click on “User Reviews.”
- Select
“Photo Quality” to see comments about the clarity of pictures that
Bing pulled from the users’ overall review of the product.
Bing Cashback
Currently, Bing Shopping lists products for more than 1,000 online retailers that participate in Bing cashback, a program that reimburses you with a percentage of the product’s price. The compare prices page lists the price at those retailers where the product you’re shopping for is available and highlights participating retailers.
The compare prices page shows the respective percentage of Live Search cashback savings for each retailer. Clicking on the percentage shows the amount of savings and what the net sales price is after the discount. When you click on “Go to Store,” an interstitial page will then ask for your e-mail address and verify that Live Search cashback is in force before you complete the transaction.
Among the list of participating retailers are the following:
- drugstore.com
- eBay
- Foot Locker
- HP
- Macy's
- Nordstrom
- Overstock.com
- Sears
- Target
- The Gap
- TigerDirect
- Walmart
|
Bing is now enabling neighborhood refinements in local interactive instant answers and business listings pages to ensure you’re getting the most relevant results on your local query.
We’re also introducing more tools and information to enable you to make better location-based decisions by giving you access to deep local content about hotels, restaurants, and other businesses including ratings, reviews, hours of operation, menus, etc.
In Maps, an updated AJAX experience focused on speed and a refreshed user experience. In addition, we’ve listened to your feedback and we know that you have local area knowledge or a specific reason you prefer to take one road or another. So we integrated drag and drop routes in Bing Maps to help you plan your trip faster, and make more useful routing decisions.
Try it: Get a route, show dragging the line on the map to alter.
Seventy two percent of searches for local businesses, restaurants and entertainment venues start in a search engine, but today’s engines don’t do enough to help you make an informed decision about the quality of the meal, the nature of the dining experience or the availability of tickets. Bing Local provides you with tools to help you make those informed decisions by bringing the relevant information to you: user reviews, hours of operation, and one-click directions and traffic reports to hasten you to your destination of choice.
Now, Bing takes local search one step further, enabling you to more accurately refine your search and access instant answers based on neighborhoods. Armed with this information, you’ll be able to identify local businesses and points of interest within your immediate vicinity. And new drag and drop functionality in Bing Maps will give you more flexibility in planning your route of travel from point to point.
Home Page
You can easily access local search from the Bing Home Page in one of two ways: Clicking on the “Maps” link will bring you to the Bing Maps Home Page, at which point you can either enter a search query or select from one of the business categories and allow Bing to surface businesses based on your physical location. You can also conduct a search directly from the Bing Home Page in your area and click on the top local listings that appear first on the search engine results page.
Try it:
- From the Bing Home Page, submit a query for “New York sushi.”
- Click on “Top local listings for sushi near New York, N.Y.”
- Alternatively, from the Bing Home Page, click on the “Local” link.
- Enter “New York sushi” in the search window on the Bing Local Home Page.
Rich Listing Results
Search results within Bing Local provide a quick snapshot of information relevant to your decision. For example, a restaurant listing calls out the phone number, type of cuisine, location, hours of operation, price range and availability of parking. In addition, search results provide a quick link to customer reviews, one-click directions, the menu and a bird’s-eye view of the location. Bing enables you to easily enter your starting location right from the results page so you can quickly get to where you need to go.
Details pages for results also include a list of nearby businesses that are relevant to your search. For example, the list related to a restaurant listing might highlight the location of nearby theaters, coffee shops and parking.
Search Refinement
Bing Local sorts search results based on Best Match, but it also gives you the option of sorting based on rating or distance. And much like Bing Shopping, the Explore Pane in Bing Local offers a variety of refinement tools to help you make informed decisions. In the case of restaurants, the top of the Explore Pane features related category that allow you to focus on a specific neighborhood or type of restaurant within your initial query. In addition, you can filter by rating, by price, by atmosphere, by ability to make reservations, by payment method and by availability of parking.
Try it:
- Within the current search listings for sushi restaurants in New York, click on “Romantic” under “Atmosphere.”
- Click on “Four-Star” under “Ratings”
- From the filtered search listings, click on “Yama”
Scorecard
The recommendations of past customers play a huge role in the businesses we frequent. With that in mind, the Scorecard feature on Bing Local details page uses a color-coded bar graph to prominently display the rankings of a business against key criteria. In the case of restaurants, the criteria might include atmosphere, food quality, entertainment and drinks. The rankings are generated by consumer reviews as well as content from partners such as Citysearch, Yelp and Judy’s Book. The Scorecard also sums up the number of reviewers for each criteria and the percentage that are positive.
Bing Local provides a link to customer reviews, but the Sentiment Extraction feature builds on Scorecard, allowing you to zero in on comments relevant to a particular criterion.
Try it: From the Yama details page, click on “Show Reviews” next to the criterion of your choice in the Scorecard. Then scroll down to get a snapshot of customers’ past experiences at this West Village neighborhood sushi bar in New York.
One-click Directions
Often times, especially when you’re in your hometown, you have a basic understanding of how to navigate the area, so by default Bing provides directions from the nearest freeway or main thoroughfare to your final destination. This saves you the often multistep set of directions of going from your home or work to the highway — something you likely already know how to do. Bing Local will surface a set of directions for each relevant point of the compass when you click on “1-Click Directions” (either from the search listings page or search details page). If door-to-door directions are needed, you can access them by clicking on “A Specific Location” from the “1-Click Directions” page. You can also access a variety of other navigational tools such as current traffic by clicking on “Go to Bing Maps.”
Try it:
- Click on “1-Click Directions” to see the various navigation options to Yama.
- Click on “A Specific Location” to submit a specific address, then click on “Cancel.”
- Click on “Go to Bing Search Maps” underneath the map.
- Cycle through the different views by selecting the Aerial, Bird’s eye and Traffic tabs at the top of the map.
Bing helps you find all the information you need for your next night out, but passing it along to your friends and scheduling a night that works for everyone can be a chore in itself. Fortunately, Bing’s new results-sharing feature eliminates much of that work. Immediately below instant answers are links to share your results via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. With a simple click on any of these links you can easily propose plans to your circle of friends or family.
Try it: Type “Fame movie” in the search box, and you will be presented with an instant answer with theatres and movie times, and the new Sharing links. You can post the times and locations of the movies on Facebook to help pick theatres around Seattle and session times, and know who’s down for it.
Next, type “restaurants” in the search box. Note the instant answer that shows great restaurants in Seattle and allows you to share potential locations with friends. You can click on Twitter, and a tweet will be sent out to check which restaurants are the best.
The primary focus of Bing Travel is helping you find the best deals on flights and hotel accommodations so you can make informed decisions about your travel arrangements. Bing Travel accomplishes this in a variety of ways: using Farecast and historical data to predict the rise and fall of ticket prices in the near-term, comparing prices against more than 100 travel, hotel and airline Web sites, and alerting you to special deals broken out by criteria such as weekend trips, record low prices or flights to family vacation destinations.
Why:
Forty-five percent of online travel arrangements begin within a search engine. Integrating a travel decision engine within Bing provides an easy way to start and finish your travel arrangements.
Home page
You can start a search for travel arrangements directly from the Bing Home Page, much the same way you initiated searches for Bing Shopping and Bing Local. Clicking on “Travel” will bring you directly to the Bing Travel Home Page. Across the top of the page are links to “Flights,” “Hotels,” “Airfare Deals” and “Destinations.”
Whether you need a flight for a particular day or destination, or your schedule is more flexible, you can access information directly from the Bing Travel Home Page. And because Bing Travel is based on Bing’s Farecast technology, it takes much of the guesswork out of knowing when to travel, the affordable places to travel to and when to purchase your ticket.
Once an airport of origin and airport of destination have been entered in the main Search Flights box, you can access information about the latest deals from either one (“Airfare Deals…” on the right side). You can also find out the optimum dates to travel during the next 30 days, based on the historical behavior of ticket prices (“Graph Fares over 30 Days”).
If you’re tied to a specific date or destination, you can enter it in the appropriate window in the Search Flights box on the Home Page, choose the travel sites you want to compare prices with, and click on “Search.”
Try it:
- From the Bing Travel Home Page, enter “Seattle” as your airport of origin and “San Francisco” as your destination.
- Click on “Airfare Deals From Seattle” and note the link in the upper-right corner for “Deals to Destination Cities.”
- Click
on the “When to Travel” link to see the predicted rise and fall of
ticket prices over the next month’s time. (You can access the same
graph from the Home Page by using the “Graph Fares over 30 Days” link.)
- Going
back to the Bing Travel Home Page, click on “Search” to see a list of
the various flights and ticket prices available for your date of choice.
- Note
on the left side of the screen that the “7-Day Low Fare Prediction”
tells you, with a percentage of confidence, whether now is the right
time to purchase that ticket.
|
Instant Answer - UPDATED
Flight search is an important travel search need for our users. Knowing this, we created a new flight search answer with an interactive calendar that allows you to select travel dates and find the best flight deals in a single click from the results page. When you search for “airfare” or “flights,” the flight search form will appear at the top of your results. Enter your cities, select your dates and click on the “find flights” button to be taken to a page with hundreds of airfares from multiple airlines and agencies, allowing users to easily comparison shop and simplify their flight purchase process. Also, the flight search engine results page (SERP) continues to include insights provided by our price predictor technology — which helps determine if now is a good time to purchase your flight, based on billions of airfare data points computed every day.
Try it: Search for “flights.”
Hotel search is another big travel search need, and that’s why we also created a new hotel search answer. It also includes an interactive calendar that allows you to select travel dates and find the hotel rates in a single click from the results page, another first within a search engine. Search for “find hotels” and the form will be at the top of your search results page. Enter your destination, select your dates and click on the “find hotels” button to be taken to a page with rates for hundreds of hotels from multiple hotel companies and agencies. Users can comparison shop, see hotels on an interactive map and filter down options by amenities, star ratings and more. The Hotel search results page also includes insights provided by our rate indicator technology — which helps determine how the current rates compare to past rates found for similar stays at a given hotel. So you can really know if that rate is a deal.
Try it: Search for “find hotels.”
You can also submit a query from the Bing Home Page, such as “Flights from Seattle to San Francisco,” which will surface an Instant Answer, including a quick snapshot of the lowest priced ticket, whether ticket prices appear to be rising or falling, a 30-day outlook on ticket prices and links to additional deals from Seattle or to San Francisco. |
Detailed Flight Results
When you submit a search for tickets on a specific date, Bing Travel surfaces a detailed listing of available flights. Each result includes the ticket price, airline, estimated departure and arrival times, airports of origin and destination, number of layovers and estimated flying time. Bing also offers little enhancements to make your decision easier, such as a clear indication whether it’s a red-eye flight or has an especially short connection.
Bing’s exclusive Farecast technology helps take the guesswork out of knowing when to buy an airline ticket. As many know, the market for airline tickets is incredibly dynamic with prices for the same flight changing day by day. Farecast uses a patented algorithm to help predict whether the ticket you want is likely to increase or decrease in price over the next seven days, which helps make the decision to buy much easier.
The Time Grid makes picking that perfect flight easy by showing you the fares based on what time of day you leave.
Flight: Search Refinement
The Explore Pane in Bing Travel allows you to fine tune your search results based on the number of stops, departure and arrival time, airlines of choice, price range, airports, flight quality (red-eye, long layover or short connection), and flight duration. You can also click on “Compare Airlines” to find out if there’s a booking fee, a low-fare guarantee or any online mileage promotions.
Try it:
On the search results page, modify your criteria in the Explore Pane under “Stops” (number of stops on your flight), “Times” (window of time in which you want to take off or land), “Connection Airports”, and “Flight Quality” to see how these changes impact the number of search results and price range.
Hotel Rate Key
Bing Travel allows you to filter hotel search results using a variety of criteria such as amenities, price range and neighborhood, but what sets Bing Travel apart from most other sites is the hotel Rate Key — a color-coded rating system that indicates whether the current rate for a specific hotel appears to be a deal — any rate lower than past rates for that particular hotel. The Rate Key makes this assessment by comparing the current rate found for the hotel to its past rates on the same travel dates or same days of the week. When combined with Map View, the hotel Rate Key allows you to compare the hotels with the best rates against those with the best location and find the one providing the best overall value.
Try it:
- From the Bing
Travel Home Page (click on “Hotels” to load the appropriate search
window), enter a search for hotels in San Francisco.
- Using the filter tools in the Explore Pane, select hotels that have “Internet” and “Business Center.”
- Click on Map View to see the locations of each hotel and the color-coded rating that denotes the value of its current rate.
Connection to Bing Maps, Photosynth
On top of the value in Bing Travel, you can also use Bing Maps to search through Wikipedia articles and learn more about your travel destination (such as Rome or Istanbul). And with Microsoft Photosynth you can take a virtual tour using panoramic photo-collages created by people who have been there before you.
Need to decide which hospital or clinic to choose for your next checkup or which side effects are related to a specific medication? Health answers helps you with these common tasks. With Health answers you get quick facts and ratings at the top of the results page, to help you make more informed Health decisions.
Try it:
Query for “Swedish Medical Center” or “H1N1.”
Self-diagnosis and treatment are no substitute for the advice and expertise of a trained physician, but when you, a friend or a family member need to address a health matter, the availability of information online can help you get the most out of your next doctor visit.
Bing Health provides you with access to medical information from a selection of trusted medical resources, including the MayoClinic.com, the American Cancer Society and MedlinePlus. You’ll have easy access to information on symptoms, diagnosis and medical procedures, as well as issues related to drugs and substances, personal health and alternative medicine.
We’ve also formed a partnership with Wolfram Alpha — the computational knowledge engine. What this means is that you’ll now be able to bring nutritional facts right into the results, calculate your body mass index, and much more.
For example, when you search for specific food items on Bing you’ll get a nutrition quick tab that allows you to learn more about it. You’ll also get a nutrition facts label at the bottom of the results page that summarizes all detailed information on that food item in a very familiar and friendly format.
And the body mass index tool will make it easier to track your workout progress. That’s why we’re introducing the body mass index interactive form on the results page. If you search for “BMI” on Bing you’ll get the option to enter your height and weight. Click on “Calculate” and you’ll get a detailed Body Mass Index analysis result.
Finally, Bing Health will include detailed information about hospitals and user-submitted rankings that help you decide where to go when you have a medical problem.
Why: Forty-five percent of people use the Internet to research what ails them and how to treat it.
Try it:
From the Bing Home Page, simply submit your query from the Home Page search window. Enter a query for “french fries.”
Bing offers a better way to search the entire Web. To complement your search experience, we have a new version of Bing for Mobile that’s specifically tailored for the quick, on-the-go searches that go hand in hand with mobile devices. Whether using the downloadable application or the browser-based version of Bing for Mobile, you’ll have the ability to save recent searches so you don’t need to constantly retype queries on those little keyboards. And Bing for Mobile will also feature better maps and an auto-locate feature that shows your current location, driving directions and quick answers for the types of searches you perform while out and about: movie listings, weather, stocks and local searches.
The NEWLY designed Bing for Mobile application integrates maps, Web and local search into an easy-to-use and visually stunning experience. As you can see, we’ve completely changed the layout of the Bing home page. The mobile app now features the wonderful image from Bing.com on the PC, which will change every day just like it does on Bing on the PC. Right on the home page are your recent searches and a couple of locations that we’ve bookmarked to access later. This is handy if you’re planning a day out and want to consult multiple locations or search results without typing each search over again.
The new Bing for Mobile App is now available for the following mobile platforms and devices, with more to come:
- Windows phones at http://www.discoverbing.com/mobile
- Pre-loaded on Samsung Intrepid devices on Sprint
- Also pre-loaded on devices from Verizon, including these:
- The BlackBerry Storm and BlackBerry Storm 2
- The BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Curve 2 and BlackBerry Curve World Edition
In addition, we’ve improved the Bing for Mobile browser (found at http://m.bing.com) so every Web-enabled phone can get a rich search experience powered by Bing.
When we designed the new app and the update to the Bing browse experience, we focused on these areas:
- Map your way. Free maps, driving directions and traffic information so you can find where you are and get where you are going.
- A feature we’ve improved in the new Bing maps application is “Locate Me.” Just press the person icon and you’ll see a pinpoint of yourself on a map.
- It’s easy in the new Bing application to access maps and turn-by-turn directions. You can show multiple results on one map, add pushpins to a map and save them to your favorites. And there’s more:
- Search over and interact with maps.
- Automatically find your location and show it on a map.
- Get directions to just about anywhere by car or foot.
- Overlay current traffic conditions to a map.
- Filter and organize results by rating and distance, and show them on the map.
- Find places of interest browsing by category such as restaurants, banks, theaters.
- Quick answers. Make decisions fast and on the go with top Web results and instant answers for your pressing questions:
- Weather. Show current conditions and a five-day forecast for most cities worldwide.
- Movie times. Show titles, ratings, theater locations and showtimes on one screen.
- Stock prices. Get the up-to-date quotes for stocks and indexes.
- Act locally. More than 50 percent of mobile searches are local. The new Bing app automatically detects your location to help you quickly find information on many local businesses. Bing for mobile makes it painless to find a nearby business, a new restaurant, or even a local movie theatre with the latest showtimes.
- Type less, search more. You don’t have to type to search. Speak your search into your phone and Bing for mobile does the rest.
Another great feature in the next version of Bing for Mobile is the ability to initiate a search using nothing more than your voice. No more typing — just talk. Try “pizza in Seattle” and watch what happens.
The new Bing for Mobile app is available on an ever-expanding list of devices. Look to http://www.discoverbing.com/mobile for application support for your handset, or use the browser-based version accessible from data-capable devices at http://m.bing.com.
The Internet has changed and so
have you. We set out to provide a dynamic Internet experience that
responds to that change and adapts to how you use the Internet.
With Bing you get more than a
search engine. You get a powerful decision engine that helps you make
more informed decisions by accomplishing the following:
- Reducing the number of wasted clicks
- Adding structure to the current chaos of search results
- Finding Instant Answers quickly and with only a single click
- Providing organized access to user and expert opinions about products and local businesses
We recognize that you can only juggle so many things at once. For those times when you’ve reached your limit, consider the Bing (tool) Bar. The Bing Bar flags all manner of online content, from e-mail to music and everything in between. And the Bing Bar also features the “no-fail-cashsaver,” which alerts you when you’re about to make a purchase that misses out on Bing cashback savings.
| Title |
Description |
Sample Queries |
| Business & Finance |
| Company Overviews |
Displays company overviews and Fortune 1000 rankings for the top 1,000 companies from CNN Money |
Appears in secondary location after stock answer: MSFT, Microsoft stock quote
Appears in secondary location without stock answer: GM
Appears in primary location: GM overview, 3M company profile
|
| Earnings |
Provides earnings information for a company |
Microsoft earnings, IBM earnings |
| Economic |
Offers a summary of current economic statistics |
economic crisis, financial crisis, U.S. recession, unemployment rate, foreclosure rate |
| Finance |
Displays company stock quotes, funds and news; ability to search multiple quotes at once |
U.S.:MSFT, DRC, Sandisk stock, NOOF, Quote MSFT GOOG YHOO, FGRIX |
| Interest Rates |
Provides a range (low average, median and high average) interest rates for a variety of loan and credit forms |
interest rates, mortgage rates, mortgage rates Ohio, 30 year mortgage rates, auto loan rates, CD rates
rates by bank: Citi, Bank of America
|
| Job Salary |
Provides users with salary information based on job title and location |
Seattle software engineer salary, programmer pay in Seattle, software engineer pay |
| Sports |
| Auto Racing |
Provides NASCAR, IRL (Indy Racing League) and F1 (Formula One) coverage for queries about the sport, a race or a driver |
Series: NASCAR racing, Sprint Cup Series, Sprint Cup
Event: Daytona 500 race, Daytona 500, Daytona 500 schedule
Driver: Matt Kenseth, Kevin Harvick, A. J. Allmendinger
|
| Cricket |
Captures the latest match scores and schedules for cricket and provides an Instant Answer |
live cricket scores, cricket score England, cricket fixtures, cricket schedule Australia |
| Golf |
Provides
answers about professional golf for queries referring to the sport in
general, a series of matches, a major tournament or a player |
Series: PGA, PGA tour, PGA golf
Event: Honda Classic, the British Open, U.S. Open
Player: Tiger Woods, Chris Couch, Mark Wilson
|
| NHL Hockey |
Schedules, game detail and player performance information for NHL hockey |
League: NHL hockey, NHL, pro hockey
Team: Vancouver Canucks, Pittsburgh Penguins
Player: Sidney Crosby, Matt Hunwick, Blake Wheeler
|
| Soccer |
Provides answers for queries about MLS and European leagues |
David Beckham, Premier League, Seattle Sounders |
| Sports (General) |
Offers scores for games in progress as well as team and player stats |
pro baseball, Seattle Mariners, Ichiro Suzuki, NBA, Boston Celtics |
| Tennis |
Provides answers about pro tennis in general, a specific match or a player |
Series: men's tennis, pro tennis, grand slamL
Event: Australian Open, Medibank International, Heineken Open
Player: Mario Anzic, Enzo Artoni, Ana Ivanovic
|
| UFC and MMA fighters |
Displays mixed martial arts fighters from the UFC and other organizations |
Chuck Liddell, Dan Saveren, Tito Ortiz |
| WWE Wrestling |
Finds basic info about WWE wrestlers and WWE events |
Triple H, Shawn Michaels |
| Travel and Navigation |
| Snow Reports |
During the season, snow conditions at mountain resorts worldwide (data feed from OnTheSnow.com) |
snow report Seattle |
| Hotels |
Search for a hotel, find the top three deals, cheapest rate, and determine whether you should buy or hold |
cheap hotels, Hilton hotels, hotels in Europe, Europe hotels, Expedia hotels, travel London
|
| Events |
Displays
information and links for related top events, around a user's location
(implicit location) or around the location specified in user query |
events in Chicago, concerts, football tickets, Broadway shows |
| Flight Status |
Provides up-to-date flight information |
UA 820, United 820, United Airlines 820, flight status United, flight status AA 7147 |
| Flights |
Submit a flight search, find the top three deals, cheapest rate, and determine whether you should buy or hold |
cheap flights, flights from Seattle, flights to Seattle, flights from Seattle to San Francisco, Alaska Airlines flights |
| Maps (Local) |
Map of a specific location or point of interest |
71 Hillside Ave., Melrose, MA; map of Mumbai; where is Norman, Oklahoma? |
| Time Zone |
Displays current time for a specific location |
time in Copenhagen |
| Traffic (Local) |
Shows traffic congestion and accidents |
commute, New York traffic, traffic |
| U.S. Travel Attractions |
Provides the top attractions and related references for a given destination query |
Seattle attractions, Seattle destination guide |
| Weather |
Provides forecast for a specific location |
Climate, weather today, Ottawa weather |
| Shopping |
| Autos |
Shows user research, user review data for autos by make and model, and new and used purchase availability |
BMW 325i, used 2003 BMW, quality used cars |
| Commerce |
Provides important refinement links such as brand, category, user opinions and price to help people refine their searches
Displays top product and cash-back offer for the query
Displays detailed info about a particular product such as spec attributes, price range, user review rating, etc.
|
mp3 players, digital cameras
Garmin GPS, Canon digital cameras, Gap jeans
Canon PowerShot, Microsoft Office
Garmin Nuvi 350, Nikon D40
|
| Coupons |
Lists coupon codes or links with embedded coupons |
Dell, Hertz coupons |
| Gas Prices |
Location-detection-based answer that uses MSN content to show the cheapest gas prices by ZIP code or city |
gas prices, cheapest gas, cheapest gas for Seattle, cheapest gas for 98121 |
| Products |
Shows product information and review summary for a product; search for a product that has not yet been released |
Canon PowerShot SD600, Canon PowerShot SD400, Zune, Nikon D80 |
| Entertainment and Recreation |
| Casual Games |
Discover casual online games provided by MSN |
Amazonian, Atlantis Quest, Bankshot Billiards Cutthroat, Bejeweled |
| Green |
Information about green topics |
carbon footprint, green driving tips, natural cleaning products |
| Health |
Provides information relevant to a broad range of health topics and detailed information about them |
diabetes, Lipitor, sprained ankle, diabetes medications, eczema medications |
| Horoscope |
Displays weekly, daily and monthly horoscope information |
Horoscope, Pisces horoscope, daily Pisces horoscope, weekly Pisces horoscope, monthly Pisces horoscope |
| Images |
Shows top image results |
cat images, panda images, pictures of elephant |
| Lottery |
Displays winning numbers for lottery games |
lottery, Powerball results |
| Movie Showtimes |
Movie showtimes, trailers and other information for in-theater movies |
"Coraline" showtimes, AMC Movie Showtimes, showtimes 90028 |
| Multimedia Video |
Shows top video results |
cat videos, South Park videos |
| Reality TV Show Results |
Offers information about who got kicked off and who's remaining on your favorite reality TV show |
American Idol, Project Runway |
| Recipes and Drinks |
Provides
users with cuisine-based recipes (e.g., Indian and Italian) and
ingredient-based recipes (e.g., potato and mushroom) or a combination
of both |
fire roasted tomato soup, beef wheat berry chili, hot collard stew, rusty nail (drink) |
| Seasonal Events |
Displays information about holidays and events you want to know more about |
Halloween, NBA All-Star game, Academy Awards, Cannes Film Festival |
| TV Guides and Shows |
Find out what's on TV for specific locations |
What's on TV, TV guide for Seattle, Seinfeld Seattle, When is Deal or No Deal is playing, Sportscenter |
| Who's Who |
Find basic info about people eminent in a field (noncelebrities) |
Paula Marchewka Koczur, John Keeler, John Johnson |
| xRank |
Find out where your favorite celebrity ranks in online popularity, and learn more about them |
Jessica Alba, Barack Obama |
| News |
| News |
Shows top news stories and/or videos, provides new from a specific search (e.g., "CNN") |
Obama inauguration, Super Bowl teams, recession, South Asia, election |
| RSS and Headlines |
Shows content from RSS results |
New York Times, Seattle Times |
| Software and Technical Search |
| File Extensions |
Enables users to search for file extension names and get a description of what the file format is |
.docx file format, .pdf extension |
| Man Page |
Provides answers for *nix man pages |
man cat, man grep, man tar |
| Microsoft Knowledge Base |
Shows information for specific Microsoft Knowledge Base articles or technical support issues |
MS08-051, MS08-050 |
| Microsoft Learning Products |
Provides
answers to customers searching for Microsoft Learning products, such as
books, courses, exams, certifications, learning plans and e-learning |
Course 8505, 9780735619937, Exam 74-132 |
| Microsoft Security Patch |
Find out what the latest Microsoft Security patches are |
MSFT security patches, Microsoft security patch, latest security patches |
| Windows Live Experiences |
Find out information about Windows Live experiences |
Bing Photos, Hotmail on Mac, Messenger Video Call |
| Software Titles for Download (non-Microsoft) |
Shows title, description, ratings and download link for software titles |
Solitaire |
| Xbox Games and Products |
Provides results for Xbox game titles and products, showing info about each and linking the user to the Xbox Web site |
"Halo 3" |
| Software and Technical Search |
| Academics |
Provides an answer for queries related to academic researchers |
<Researcher Name>, Dr. <Researcher Name>, Prof. <Researcher Name>, paper by <Researcher Name> |
| Facts |
Answers fact-based questions |
population of Ireland, Who won Super Bowl XXX?, Seattle ZIP code, fear of cats, Ernest Hemingway birthday, Christmas 2008 |
| Freebase |
Obtains answers to natural language questions about the visual arts, business, etc. |
What
did picasso paint?, Who painted dejeuner sur l'herbee?, Rodin
sculptures, impressionist paintings, impressionist painters, Who is
Hulk Hogan?, Who is George Bush?, Bill Gates, Who did Microsoft
acquire?, Who founded Microsoft?, Where is Microsoft headquartered? |
| Sacred Text |
Look up passages from the Bible, Qur'an and Book of Mormon |
John 1:17, 1; Nephi 3:1; Al-Anfal; John 1 |
| Wikipedia Answer |
Takes users to a Wikipedia entry |
Answer based on gallery queries |
| Useful Tools |
| Answer Showcase |
Provides query fields for specific functions or features that consumers are searching for |
calculator,
currency conversion, dictionary, encyclopedia, equations, stock,
sports, package tracking, time zone, unit conversion, VIN, instant
answers |
| Area Codes |
Looks up the location of an area code or ZIP code |
area code 724 |
| Calculator |
Offers calculator functions and constants |
24
* 32 / 67, (sin 100) * 50, 2% of 25, 20 modulo 9, 4th root of 37, 5%4,
arc tan 25, gravitational constant, answer to life the universe and
everything |
| Conversions |
Converts one unit of measure to another |
How
many miles in a kilometer?, 10 pounds in grams, 100 deg Celsius in
Kelvin, 100 pounds in kg, 15 grams in ounces, What is 63 degrees F in
C?, 63 degrees F in C |
| Currency |
Converts from one currency to another |
convert 100 dollars to yen |
| Dictionary |
Defines a word |
define pert, meaning of pert, pert definition, definition of pert, what is pert |
| Equations |
Solves simple algebraic equations |
2x + 5 = 10, solve q^2 -4 = 9, 2y^2 + 4y -10 = 9 |
| Package Tracking |
Tracks DHL, UPS and other packages by tracking number |
DHL 2710172150, 1z9999999999999999 |
| Phone Book (Local) |
Location and phone number for a specific item or category |
Rhinebeck, NY restaurants, Old Navy, Phoenix tattoo shops |
| Popular URLs |
Provides URL to Web site that user is searching for |
bingo.com, cstd.ca, flightarrivals.com |
| Related Topics |
Provides
links for related topics to the original query. For example, if the
user queries for Canon, some of the related topics would be Nikon,
Olympus, Casio, etc. |
Canon, Paris Hilton, Barack Obama |
| Thesaurus |
Displays synonyms and antonyms |
synonym repetitive, other words for repetitive, synonyms for repetitive, repetitive synonyms, synonyms repetitive |
| Translation |
Translates
foreign language queries to English and presents the translation as a
query suggestion; also available in natural language |
juegos, bolsa de trabajo, translate juegos, translate games to Spanish, games in Spanish |
| Unit Conversions |
Converts between different units of measurement |
How many feet in a meter?, 2 liters to gallons, number of lbs in 6.54kg, convert from 8C to F |
| VIN |
Vehicle lookup by VIN |
3fafp11392r187591, 2hnyd18834h504321, wbxpa73474wb29428 |