Bing Autosuggest Expands

Back in May we introduced People Autosuggest, a faster way to find the person you’re looking for directly within the search box. If you’re searching for a celebrity, politician, athlete or even a colleague with a publicly available LinkedIn profile, Bing provides a snapshot of information about that person below the search bar. For example, if you’re searching for Michelle Williams, we’ll ask you if you’re looking for the actress or singer from Destiny’s Child.

Building on People Autosuggest, today we are expanding the number of categories that will show up in autosuggest to include brands, movies, albums, places, software, sport teams, animal species and more. For example, consider the word “pitbull“. This is an interesting search because you may want results for the artist (a person) or the dog (a breed). Because only you can tell us which one you’re interested in finding, we serve up thumbnails with both the person and the dog. These are very different things that just happen to have the same name. But, Bing understands the difference and gives you the opportunity to select the right one. 

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In order to make these distinctions, Bing utilizes an underlying technology we call Satori that understands the relationships between millions of people, places and things providing you with a more useful model of the digital and physical world. All of this computational power allows you to select the most appropriate choice in a matter of milliseconds.

Let’s look at another example. If you are searching for “Harry Potter” we give a variety of choices including the literary series, the character, and a selection of movie titles.

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If you search “Empire state building” we provide relevant information about this place directly in the search box so you have an initial sense of the results you’ll get when you click through.

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We’re are constantly updating Bing to include more people, places and things so stayed tuned for more in the coming months.

– Antonio Gulli, Principal Development Manager, Bing