At Bing, we never stop exploring ways to improve the search experience.  Whether it’s making small adjustments to how we present results or major changes to the user interface, we’re always looking at new approaches to help you get more done.

Over the last one year, we have been working hard to develop a more natural way for users to address technical queries. It could be someone looking to download or troubleshoot software or a programmer who wants to get the technical details of an API.  In all cases, we have been making strides to make technical searches easier.

Let’s take a look at some of the common technical tasks.

Making Code Search & API reference easier on Bing

One of the common tasks in a programmer’s life is learning about new APIs. The best way to learn about an API is to see a description and an example of how it is being used. More importantly, seeing the actual code is critical for programmers.  In many cases, this information is buried in the API documentation requiring additional steps.

Here is how we have streamlined API and code search reference queries.

  

 

In the above example a programmer queried for List.Sort method. As you can see without even going into the MSDN page, user can know about the use this method, can even copy paste the code and start using it.

The above experience is helpful because it provides relevant information directly in the search results page itself letting programmers spend more time coding and less time searching.

Bing Understands developer queries containing non-alphanumeric characters

Technical developer queries often contain non-alphanumeric characters like   :: (scope), ++ (operators), () (function), etc. Such queries are notoriously difficult for a search engine to handle.

Bing has given special treatment to such technical queries, so that the context is preserved and we show relevant results on top.

– Bing Canada