Search Blog

Free T-Shirt Friday and Stefan…Again

Bing — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:29:00 GMT

The sun is out in the PNW and you know what that means? No? Ok, I don’t either. But is it Friday, which means it is time for another Friday’s With Stefan and Free T-Shirt Friday. Find the best related query to this week's theme and send it to us on twitter at @bing and include the hash-tag #FTF.

Last week’s winners of #FTF and the free copy of Windows 7 are below. They all gave great query suggestions and included the link to the query! Well done! Please DM us your mailing address and your shirt size and we will get them off to you via the snail mail.

kensm: @bing "Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world." - Babe Ruth http://bit.ly/22Ww2A #FTF
luv_mydachshund: @bing #FTF - http://bit.ly/3b7pV6
empresschang: @bing Time for some fun with Baseball Bloopers [Videos] http://bit.ly/2EHG5B #FTF
priesmeyer: @bing #FTF It's as American as baseball & apple pie. http://bit.ly/2V7PwS
joshuawrichards: @Bing #FTF Many consider the 1991 World Series the best ever. 4 Games Decided in last at-bat, 3 go into extra innings http://bit.ly/BINGFTF
talverion: @bing "baseball how-to AND Stats AND world series" - http://tinyurl.com/yjf4tsk This was helpful for me: http://tinyurl.com/2rdh58 #FTF
justag33k: @bing #FTF I have always been fascinated by the 'First Pitch' and I think it is a tradition that gets overlooked http://bit.ly/2SIvyA

This week’s #FTF Episode:

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Sorry…we ran out of room on our camera….the theme of the week is…Twilight! Anything and everything to do with the Twilight movie and book series. Find the best search results using Bing and send us a tweet with the link to the query (great examples above).

Happy Friday!

Kristin Meldahl - Bing

MSN and Bing Getting Up Close and Personal with New Moon and Twilight

Bing — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:28:00 GMT

Holy Twilight-mania! I attempted to look for information on Twilight and there are, well, hundreds if not thousands of Twilight sites out there, I found myself buried in a torrent of Twilight hysteria. I mean, I have heard about this phe-nom but did not truly, culturally, philosophically understand it until today. So in the midst of my Twilight research I found some pretty cool stuff that we’ve done across MSN and Bing that brings a ton of unique Twilight information together into one place. So here’s the scoop:

MSN Movies is sharing a very special – and exclusive - Twilight experience using Silverlight and Bing Maps to take fans on a Twilight video tour. The tour brings fans to Forks, Washington to see all the cool locations from Twilight and New Moon, such as the Cullen house, Fork’s Police Station, Fork’s Hospital, the book store, and the high school. Just scroll over the Bing Map for location-based navigation and check out all of the crazy information that pops up.

In addition to the interactive map, check out some of MSN’s other exciting features including Bella’s birthday celebration, vampire makeover tips, interviews with the cast, and the transformation of the city of Forks, Washington has into a "Twihard" haven.

The Twilight connections are running deep over here, Bing also asked Twilight fans to submit questions via Facebook that Ryan Seacrest could ask the cast on Monday at the premier of New Moon. Check the Bing Facebook site for updates on Tuesday for answers to the questions that were submitted. If you missed your chance to get your question asked there is still time, just tweet @MSN_Entertain with your questions and get the chance to win a signed Twilight poster!

Now that I am a legit Twilight fan I am going to be checking out the Twilight Superfans page, hope you do too.

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

Other post of interest:

Exclusive New Moon Video Footage on MSN Movies

“Look kids! Big Ben…House of Parliament…”and Bing in the UK!

Bing — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:22:00 GMT

When you search for Football, what kind of answers do you expect to find. Well, I guess it depends on where you are doing the asking, if you are in the UK you probably don’t want to see NFL schedules. You probably mean what we in the US call soccer. Well today, millions of searchers in the UK can rest assured that Bing knows what they are talking about. We are excited to announce today that Bing in the UK is shedding its beta tag. We want to congratulate our pals over in the UK on a huge milestone. You can now use Bing to make faster more informed choices on a daily basis. Oh, and the next Manchester United game is on the 21^st of November at 17:30 GMT (that’s 5:30 p.m. for us Yanks), in case you were wondering.

Some of the great features for Bing users in the UK are:

The daily Bing Homepage image and hotspots are something that now will be localized in the UK, with unique imagery and hotspots.
Visual Search using visual images and metadata to make search more visual and more compelling.
More Instant Answers. Get quick response answers and results to searches, such as how is Liverpool doing in the Premiership or which tourist attraction should I take my in-laws to at the weekend?
See who or what is being chatted about real-time with a global live Twitter feed with Bing Twitter search.
Looking for the best deals? - There is now an integrated shopping experience with Ciao UK. With Bing you can search the Internet to find the best prices, reviews and local availability.
With insights from our Multimap users, Bing Maps now offers new map styles, imagery and transit integration as well as draggable routes.
Bing has been built for the UK to help consumers get to key local sites and services in fewer links by including popular links, search boxes and suggestions within best match.

A Huge Welcome to the Bing family to those in the UK!

Kristin Meldahl - Bing

Other post of interest:

Released: Bing Maps UK

In His Own Words: Stephen Wolfram on Computational Knowledge

Bing — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:32:00 GMT

You have (hopefully) read our post on our exciting collaboration between Bing and Wolfram|Alpha to bring some of the amazing computational knowledge of Wolfram|Alpha into the Bing experience.

We had the privilege of sitting down and talking with none other than Stephen Wolfram himself a few weeks back to get his take on this exciting challenge of making more of the world’s knowledge computable. Below are some excerpts from that conversation, we hope you will enjoy them.

Clip 1 caption. Stephen on the platform vision behind Wolfram|Alpha, and how that fits in with Bing.

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Clip 2 caption. Stephen explains how the pieces come together inside Wolfram|Alpha

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Clip 3 caption. Stephen talks about how exciting it is that we can begin do something this ambitious.

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Adam Sohn - Bing

Other post of interest:

How Many Calories in a Burger? What’s 2^2^2^2^2? Bing and Wolfram|Alpha Have the Answers

Bing — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:19:00 GMT

One of the things we’ve tried to do with Bing is to bring customers the information they are looking for, presented in a useful way. If we can adequately infer a user’s intent, we can bring them a much more compelling experience than an endless list of links. We can bring them real knowledge and get them closer to the answer they were looking for or the decision they were trying to make.

At Bing, this journey began with our work on answers, and we continue to try hard to deliver the best answers we can, based on our estimation of query intent. Flight information, local weather, sports scores and stats are some of the early examples of these types of experiences.

But we believe lots more can be done for our customers. Today we are excited to unveil some work we have been doing with Wolfram|Alpha. Started in May 2009 by noted scientist Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha is an ambitious (and very cool) project to, as the company’s website says, “make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.”

This notion of creating and presenting computational knowledge in search results is one of the more exciting things going on in search (and beyond) today, and the team at Bing is incredibly fired up to bring some of this amazing work to our customers. You will begin to see the benefits of this unique partnership over the next several days as we roll it out in the US.

So what are we doing? Well, we‘ll be providing access to Wolfram|Alpha’s advanced algorithms and expertly curated data within the Bing experience. This new and exciting work is completely aligned with our broader goal of enabling faster, more informed decisions. Specifically, we will bring nutritional information and tools into Bing’s search results, as well as some straight up hard math and homework help.

Let’s take a look at what this partnership will bring in the areas of nutrition and fitness.

Roughly 90 Million Americans are on a diet every year, which means keeping track of your diet and physical condition is important to many people. Bing, powered by Wolfram|Alpha will bring you improved nutrition results in order to help you make more informed choices on your diet.

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 also get a nutrition facts label at the bottom of the results page that summarizes all information on that food item in a very familiar and friendly format.

Some ways it can be useful:

Flu season is here and you want to ensure a solid immune system. Which has more vitamins, orange or kiwi?
You are working out to get in shape for the ski season. Which has more protein, steak or chicken?

(equivalent to screenshots above)Another helpful tool is the body mass index that tracks your workout progress. We have introduced Wolfram|Alpha’s body mass index interactive form on our results page. If you search for ‘bmi’ you’ll get the option to enter your height and weight. Click ‘Calculate’ and you’ll get a detailed Body Mass Index analysis directly on Bing.

The improved nutrition and fitness results are just a few of the computational search results that our partnership with Wolfram|Alpha will bring to Bing. We are also able to rely on Wolfram|Alpha's ability to solve complex math functions (and some easy ones too) and to provide you with knowledge about unique math concepts.

We have begun rolling out these features and you should start seeing them in the days ahead.

We hope you use them to stay happy and healthy (and good at math)!

Thanks,

Tracey Yao – Program Manager

Pedro Silva – Product Manager

Other post of interest:

In His Own Words: Stephen Wolfram on Computational Knowledge

Bing’s Next Chapter Begins Today

Bing — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:01:00 GMT

When Bing launched back in June, our aim was to bring innovation to search in three important areas:

Provide great results to help reduce the amount of time people spend searching and clicking on bad links
Offer a richer, more organized experience to help people refine questions they ask of search engines as well as and provide innovative experiences based on what users are trying to accomplish
Develop tools that help simplify key tasks, specifically around shopping, travel, local and health, given that search is the place many people go first to make decisions.

The product that we delivered was centered on these principles and your responses to it have made us smile and cringe at different times as people express delight with some features and dismay at others. We’re also happy to see that so many of you know about the product - research tells us 4 in 10 know Bing is Microsoft’s search engine – and are happy to see us continuing to earn your queries in a very crowded search market.

Since June we’ve released a bunch of new stuff to try and meet the demands of our users – Twitter integration, Visual Search, Twitter Search, better maps, and a host of user interface and index improvements. But being the true search geeks that we are, we knew we needed to keep our eye on the prize: we still need to help people make better decisions with more confidence. We are, after all, a Decision Engine not just a Search Engine.

So we listened: we talked to people in small groups all across the nation, we worked with search pioneers outside the company to get their take on what we were missing, and we listened to the quiet and fleeting clues about what you want in search by analyzing reams of data.

Three trends became clear:

People want faster access to knowledge: They expect engines to understand the intent of their query and give them information, answers and shortcuts to help them complete their task. If your query tells us you’re looking for a band’s next concert outing, why can’t we just make that information appear right at the top of the page?
People expect more than just 10 blue links: Not all queries are the same so why do most of the answers you get back from engines look the same? There are certain queries (like trying to research a vacation) where different user interfaces can actually help people get their task done more quickly. So knowing this, and realizing that knowledge comes in many forms, we’re creating a more visual search experience to make searching easier and, dare we say, a little more fun.
Lastly, there is an increased focus on “getting stuff done” with search: Clearly people are looking for a way to decrease the amount of time they are sifting through the web assembling the information they need to make a decision. We focused on how we can speed the information gathering process, and then give you great tools to help make better decisions.

We’re excited to unveil some new features that are going to respond to these trends. We’re just starting the US rollout, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t see all the improvements immediately, it’ll take us several days to roll it all out.

There are a lot of updates that we want to share with you and we will cover most of them on the blog over the next few days. Today, however, we’ll highlight just a few.

It’s the holiday season and many of us will soon hit the road to visit family and friends. Research shows that when most of us plan travel, we turn to search engines first. Bing has several features that might help, beginning with a task-focused home page. Just scroll over “Travel” and with a simple click you can conduct your travel related-queries.

There is also an interactive Instant Answer that allows you to enter your origin, destination, travel dates and…click…you are in Bing travel. Within Bing travel you have fast access to flight purchase recommendations via the price predictor that tells you the least expensive times to fly. In addition to money, you’ll save time as well with Bing travel’s comprehensive flight listing results and links to top travel sites and airlines.

Not only are we using the web to help plan and book travel, we are also looking for information on local attractions, points of interest, neighborhoods and other local information sources like newspaper web sites. So we’ve created enhanced results for hundreds of cities, putting key information only a click away. Surveys among travelers also show that a top unmet need is access to high-quality images of potential destinations. We’ve taken note, and developed enhanced city results, which include links to key information and high-resolution slide shows.

We’re making the very popular preview feature even better in a number of ways. We’re making it easier to actually find it J by making the expansion button more obvious. We’re doing a better job mining things like contact phone numbers and email addresses from web pages and displaying them clearly under a Contact banner, and generally cleaning up the interface to make it easier to decide if this a site you want to visit.. Last, we’re also integrating images in some preview results. We believe that all these features will allow for a faster decision about whether a site is right for your needs, which means less clicking on your browser’s back button.

Now what to do once you’ve arrived at your destination? Or, what will you do to entertain the family while they visit you? You can now use our new event search feature, which provides a quick summary of events for major cities, which you can filter by categories like performances, civic activities, music and others:

Bing also makes it easy to see prices from popular ticket vendors across the web for events and even gives you handy venue information right in the search result!

Speaking of holidays and family…Have you started shopping yet? Has your little one given you his or her wish list? Or better yet, have you given your wish list to your family? We’ve helped make researching and deciding a little easier with our search sharing feature. Simply type in a product name and then share with your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail. Who would have thought making a holiday list using search could be so easy?

With the weather turning cold, it’s harder than ever to keep in shape. And all those goodies during the holidays won’t help. To help out, we’ve introduced better results for health conditions, medications, and even hospitals.. Each gives you more information and a more organized set of results to make it easy to get your health-related questions answered.

I’ve only touched on a few of our new features, so make sure to watch this space for discussions on other updates in the days to come.

--Henry Hall, Bing Product Management

Other posts of interest:

Bringing the Best of Web Video to You at Bing Videos

Bing maps is Looking Good

Mobile Madness Round 2… Then and Now

Bing is Bringing Twitter Search to You

Bringing the Best of Web Video to You at Bing Videos

Bing — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:13:00 GMT

Turn off the lights (literally), share with your friends and kick back…you are about to see the latest Bing videos experience.

Starting today and rolling out over the next few days Bing videos will provide a new unified online video destination that delivers a comprehensive, organized, and high-quality video experience. This change will combine the powerful search experience of Bing, with the expertise of MSN video all into one destination.

With the New Bing Video you can now access videos from across the web, MSN’s array of high-quality videos, and videos from sites such as Hulu, ABC, and Youtube. Bing videos viewing options are nearly endless.

Check out the cool new home page which makes it easy to search and browse for the videos you want to see.

With over 900+ T.V. shows in Bing Videos, I can’t wait to catch up on my favorite shows, discover new favorites and watch right from my laptop. We’ve gone deeper with organization, making it easy to find your favorite episode, even from last season!

And now with the new viewing experience, the ability to share videos and the dim the lights feature, watching videos online will be even better.

We hope these updates will make your online video viewing and search experience even easier and more enjoyable. Make Bing videos your one stop shop to find and watch all the online video content you want.

Kristin Meldahl - Bing

Other post of interest:

MSN Editorial Gets Behind Bing Video

Bing maps is Looking Good

Bing — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Today you may have noticed there are a few updates to Bing Maps. We have highlighted just a few below. For the complete details on all the updates to Bing maps, check out Chris Pendleton’s post on the Bing maps blog.

Draggable Routes:

You are now able to generate a route, and change it, simply by grabbing and dragging it to where you want the route to go. To use draggable routes, click the directions link in the welcome pane or the car icon near the bottom of the welcome pane. Enter a start and end, generate a route, then grab anywhere on the route to move the route line. The route will regenerate for you.

New Navigation:

There is now a subset of features on the button bar along the bottom of the welcome pane.

“Welcome” loads the welcome pane
“Car” loads driving directions
“Star” loads My Places, formerly called Collections
“Envelop” loads the ability to share the map with someone via email, copy a URI or embed the map into a web page
“Printer” is for printing
“Traffic light” will load the traffic overlay

Don’t forget to keep checking back here for more updates that are coming to Bing this week.

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

Other posts of interest:

Bing Maps Gets An Overhaul…And Some New Features

Get Your L.A. Style on With Ryan Seacrest

Bing — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:01:00 GMT

As I mentioned on Friday there was some rumblings in the hallways about a contest that would start this week. Well…today is the day. The Bing cashback contest is officially live and you can now win a chance to do L.A. in style—with $10,000 in your pocket, a Hollywood makeover, a round-trip flight, hotel and serious E! studio time with Ryan Seacrest! This could not have come at a better time…some fun in the sun is just what the doctor ordered.

For more details on how to enter and the contest rules go here.

Kristin Meldahl - Bing

Other post of interest:

Everyone Could Use Some Extra Cash and A Free Trip!

It’s Friday and Stefan is Back! And so is Free T-shirt Friday

Bing — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:25:00 GMT

Stefan is back! Which means Friday’s With Stefan can resume and another Free T-Shirt Friday theme for you all to search for. To make up for our absence last week we are adding a free copy of Windows 7 to the winners for this week’s FTF#. So check out the video and tweet us @bing #FTF and we will pick the winners.

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Happy Friday all!

Kristin Meldahl

Everyone Could Use Some Extra Cash and A Free Trip!

Bing — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:25:00 GMT

As my suntan fades more and more each day and as people’s Facebook status updates are saying that they are heading to Hawaii…Mexico…and I sit here in this dreary weather pondering when I might see the sun again…I have a new found hope!

Today I heard in the hallways that there is an exciting contest that is going to be announced next week that includes; Free CASH, a trip to a very sunny destination, a movie star like makeover, as well as some face time with “The Face of Entertainment” himself…Wahoo!...There is a light and I can’t wait! Can’t give away too many details but I can say it is worth checking back next week to find out more! Make sure you follow Bing cashback on Twitter and Facebook for the latest.

Here’s to looking forward to some rays, cool hard cash, a fabulous makeover and some one on one time with one of your TV idols.

Kristin Meldahl - Bing

MSN and Bing - a Match Made in Redmond

Bing — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:40:00 GMT

The Hallways here are all a flutter as we celebrate with our MSN teammates. Today marks another milestone in the history of the MSN Homepage.

With a new, streamlined and less cluttered appearance you will be able to navigate more quickly to the information and services you use on a daily basis like online videos, local information, news, entertainment, sports, money, lifestyle and of course your familiar Bing search experience built in.

You will see Bing’s integration throughout the MSN experience in key areas including shopping, travel, local, and as a way of highlighting hot topics, trends or people. Detailed local information is offered on the new MSN Local Edition, which is the only local online source that smartly combines Bing search and your real-time community news, which is grouped by ZIP code.

But wait. There’s more. With the new MSN homepage, you will now be able to stay up to date with all your friends and social networks like Windows Live, Facebook and Twitter right from the homepage.

The new MSN homepage preview will begin rolling out tomorrow (November 4, 2009) and become widely available to over 100 million U.S. customers early 2010.

We encourage you all to try it out and let the MSN team know what you think. As always your feedback is important to all of us.

Congrats to the MSN team. The new MSN has never looked so good.

Kristin Meldahl and the Bing Team

Other posts of interest:

The New MSN Homepage Unveiled

Staying Healthy With MSN and Bing

Bing Maps on the New MSN Homepage

Mobile Madness Round 2… Then and Now

Bing — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:25:00 GMT

The availability of Windows phones earlier this month was a great kick off to mobile madness and a good excuse to give some sneak peeks of our new Bing™ for mobile app. We have been hard at work trying to bring Bing to all sorts of mobile devices, to provide customers with an amazing search experience wherever they are. As we are feeling nostalgic for some reason today, we thought a little trip down memory lane was in order.

It all began in 2007 (well 2005 if you want to go back to betas but for the sake of time, let’s start in 2007). It was the year of No Country for Old Men and the Indianapolis Colts winning the Super Bowl. It was also the year we shipped a new, integrated mobile search experience on the Windows Mobile platform, and began adding some cool features to the Windows Mobile search experience including real-time traffic, maps and directions, movie times, gas prices and even voice search (which we think is wicked cool). We also shipped a version for BlackBerry devices equipped with location awareness functionality to enhance searches.

We know, you are wondering “what have you done for me lately?” Well, last week we unveiled the new and improved Bing for mobile browser, give it a try at m.bing.com from your web-enabled device. Today, we’re happy to share that the Bing for mobile application is available on the brand new Verizon BlackBerry Storm 2, and is now rolling out to Verizon BlackBerry Storm 1 users. Simply go to the Bing icon on your device to use the app. Here’s a look at what you’ll see.

Bing for mobile was designed to help mobile users make decisions and get where you need to be quickly and easily when you are on the go and the new app takes that to the next level. A few updates you’ll notice:

Map Your Way with quick access to maps, driving directions and traffic information. And with an improved auto-locate feature, you can find where you are and where you are going.
Quick Answers with a customizable mobile homepage you can save your favorite searches making it easier to get the information you want quickly.
Act Locally and quickly find information on local businesses including nearby restaurants or a local movie theatre with the latest showtimes.
Type Less, Search More with the voice search feature. Speak your search query into your phone and Bing does the rest.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Justin Jed, Bing for mobile

Other post of interest:

Bing for mobile now live at m.bing.com

Where Do The Zombies Gather on This All Hallows Eve

Bing — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:39:00 GMT

There is a crisp bite in the air, a light drizzle coming down and fog covering the ground on this All Hallows Eve, and we’re starting to get scared. With Halloween upon us we suspect you have begun to gather your fellow vampires, witches, goblins, and if you dare zombies for this frightful occasion. We over here at Bing have gathered a few zombies together to inspire some last minute costumes ideas, in our newest visual search experience (still in beta) - feel free to explore and refine to find the perfect Halloween inspiration.

What does tomorrow hold for you? Some tricks or treats? A Halloween party or two? Maybe a trip to a haunted house or maybe even a haunted mansion? Wherever the day and night takes you, we hope it is ghoulish, creepy and the most of all fun!

Happy Halloween!

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

Other posts of interest:

Haunted hotels: Discover a room with a boo

Bug Killer – A Channel 9 Halloween special

It’s a Full Moon for Bing Today

Ghost? Bumble bee? No? Ok, This Year it is a Vampire!

Bing for mobile now live at m.bing.com

Bing — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:25:00 GMT

Today we released an update to the Bing for mobile browser at m.bing.com. In addition to being a great resource for local searches, quick answers, and maps, we have some new features to tell you about:

NFL feature – type a team or player and see upcoming games, stats, and scores. While the game is on, you can get real-time updates on the plays. (U.S. only)

Flight status – enter the airline and flight number and get the latest departure and landing times.

Bing for touch devices

Great news for you touch phone owners in the U.S.: we have a new version of Bing just for high-resolution touch devices. We optimized for touch navigation to make the most of your phone, and added a great new Movies feature. Search for Movies in your city, and you’ll see the movies playing nearby, showtimes, overviews, and even trailers and video clips.

You can get to this version by going to m.bing.com with your iPhone, Zune HD, T-Mobile G1, Verizon Imagio, or Samsung Omnia. We’ll be adding support for new devices over the next couple of months.

Try Bing today at m.bing.com

Give the updated Bing a try now by visiting m.bing.com with your mobile phone. It’s available in 31 countries for just about any phone with an internet connection. For more information about Bing for mobile products, visit our website at www.bing.com/mobile.

Justin Jed – Bing mobile

Other posts of interest:

Use Your Voice to Text, Call and Search with Bing