Bing - Expecting a Package? - Search Blog

July 19, 2006, 05:56 PM by Bing | 21 Comments

I feel like I’m always expecting packages. In fact, I have been receiving a steady stream of packages for the last five months because my husband and I are remodeling our 1930 house we recently purchased.

At first it was fun, kind of like having a birthday everyday -- but then it got challenging to keep track of everything that we had ordered. Using the package tracking features on the various shipping companies’ websites became a tedious daily ritual.

But, how cool is this? I got to be part of solving my own problem through my work. I am a Program Manager on Instant Answers and my team and I just finished developing a new Instant Answer that has since alleviated the annoyances of tracking all my packages. Now I can go to MSN Search to track packages from any of four providers, FedEx, DHL, UPS, and USPS. I no longer have to navigate to four distinct sites and follow four processes to see the status of my packages. I can enter just a tracking ID or an ID and some other package tracking keywords, and the Package Tracking Instant Answer properly constructs the tracking link for me. All I have to do is click the link and view the status. WooHoo! More time for Xbox 360 in the evenings!

Here are a few examples of searches you can do on MSN Search to track your packages; just plug in your own IDs for the x’s:

Where is FedEx package xxxxxxxxxxxx?

Tracking status xxxxxxxxxxxx

DHL shipment xxxxxxxxxxx

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Do you find this feature as useful as I do; try it out and let me know what you think.

--Jocelyn Dollar, Program Manager, Instant Answers

Comments

SEARCH ENGINES WEB ♥

Posted On July 19, 2006, 11:50 PM

This is a good idea in theory - but only techies would understand it

to bring it to the masses - allow Search Engines WEB to suggest a separate Subdomain that is EXTREMELY easy to remeber - and have the options prefomationed or a very simple click and construct search field

you could intially publicize this feature by putting a link on the msn homepage

Evan

Posted On July 20, 2006, 08:32 AM

I think this is pretty damn awesome!

xml

Posted On July 20, 2006, 09:31 AM

hi,
i dunno if you can do anything about it but i just have to let somebody know the following:

i cant for the love of god access the english version of msn, the stupid thing keeps redirecting me to http://search.msn.com.br/ even switching the language on msn settings doesnt work!

i am really frustrated because i need to access http://search.msn.com/developer/ and the brazillian version of that doesnt exist (msn redirects me to http://search.msn.com.br/developer/).

also i am not brazillian! portuguese from portugal is different enough for me to prefer the english version of the site.

</rant>

any help welcomed

John

Posted On July 21, 2006, 03:06 AM

Great idea, I never knew this could be done

Amanda Hugenkiss

Posted On July 21, 2006, 09:32 AM

This is great, unfortunately i have been doing this with Google for about 3 years now. In fact, whenever i get an email about a package being shipped in my Gmail account it provides a link on the right nav bar (instead of a irrelevant banner ad) with a link to the delivery company's tracking page. i dont even have to copy or type in the package ID its done for me.

Next time i am on MSN Search i will check it out though.

argplywood

Posted On July 22, 2006, 10:00 AM

Thank you very much from Turkey

Hazman

Posted On July 22, 2006, 01:25 PM

I did not know that you can do that. Normally, I would go to indivual shipping companies to track my packages.

This save a lot of time.

mp

Posted On July 22, 2006, 06:18 PM

This is cool.

This is still not available on live.com. I have read an earlier post that says that you guys are working on adding these features to live.com. Adding new features to msn search that dont exist on the supposedly cutting edge live.com search doesnt help live.com's adoption.

Also, please do something about the *super slow* loading speed of live.com search. The javascript you have is just *too heavy*. Whenever I am in a hurry I hesitate using live.com search (although it is still the default in my IE7 browser) just because I am not sure how long it will take. This is a definite blocker to my adoption of live.com. Pretty soon, I will be forced to change my default to something else, maybe even Google!

Dirk Massat

Posted On July 23, 2006, 06:50 AM

great site with good look and information...i like it

laurent

Posted On July 23, 2006, 01:53 PM

The MSN lab page: http://sandbox.msn.com/ has not been updated for 4 years.

Either you delete the page or you update it. For the moment it gives a bad image of MSN!

James

Posted On July 24, 2006, 11:02 AM

Hello,

Can you create a feature on the search page to be able to preview/Quick Peek at the pages before opening to a new window????

just like at favorites.live.com where you click to preview the links.

That would be awsome, because I don't want to waste time going from site to site when I can preview the page from Live.Com

I hope you tak this under consideration.

Thank You.

Bob Roth

Posted On July 24, 2006, 09:24 PM

Or, you can send the tracking number in a text message to 4INFO (44636) and find out where it is at... even set a text alert for location changes, when it is on the delivery truck or has been delivered.

Learn about the service at http://4info.net/howto/track.jsp

Fred Smoot

Posted On July 24, 2006, 09:27 PM

As noted in other comments, hardly new. Plus, if I didn't read this blog I would never know about this feature. A search for "package tracking" points to nothing about the feature.

Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com have offered this feature for years. Ask even provides a direct link to the delivery services home page, toll free phone number, and the ability to choose a provider by just searching package tracking. Many users are likely to only enter package tracking and then find out about this service.
http://www.ask.com/web?q=package+tracking&qsrc=1&o=0&l=dir

Jerry Garcias

Posted On July 24, 2006, 10:22 PM

For over a year, Bloglines has offered package tracking with updates via RSS.
See:
http://www.bloglines.com/about/pr_03302005

ROBERT PRESTON

Posted On July 31, 2006, 12:57 PM

WANT TO KNOW WHEN PACKAGE WILL BE HERE

find content in Bing community

Community

COMMUNITY

BLOGS

FORUMS

MEDIA

EVENTS

Expecting a Package?