Bing with brains: search engine partners Wolfram Alpha to improve results

Bing has partnered with Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha launched earlier this year and has been likened to a big knowledge calculator, providing detailed information on topics rather than concentrating on websites and products.

At the moment, the information included from Wolfram Alpha in Bing search results will be to do with themes such as nutritional values of food or to work out maths problems. For the moment, the partnership is only available in the US.

Nutritional information may sound like a very narrow field to focus on but Bing says that with 90 million Americans on a diet each year, the partnership can help users make better food decisions. When searching for a food item, the results will now include a nutrition quick tab, and a nutrition facts label that is presented in the same format as on US food packaging.

Microsoft is desperate for Bing to become a serious rival to Google and adding results from Wolfram Alpha could be the kind of development that starts to convert the early adopters.

Writing in the Bing blog, programme managers Tracey Yao and Pedro Silver, said: "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."

This article was first published on revolutionmagazine.com

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