Tag: Bing

Bing: It’s Taking Us Some Time To Build A ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Tool

Most of the whole “right to be forgotten” storyline has been focused on Google as it has always been at the center of the story, but don’t forget, the recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union applies to other search engines as well.

Microsoft has put out a statement on the matter, buried in its help center, and helpfully brought to light by Danny Sullivan:

We’re currently working on a special process for residents of the European Union to request blocks of specific privacy-related search results on Bing in response to searches on their names. Given the many questions that have been raised about how the recent ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union should be implemented, developing an appropriate system is taking us some time. We’ll be providing additional information about making requests soon.

Google was able to get its tool out relatively quickly, so it’s interesting that it’s taking Microsoft so much longer, given that it frequently criticizes Google regarding privacy-related issues.

Once Google released its tool, it immediately averaged 10,000 requests per day. Google is expected to have to make some serious resource adjustments to handle so many requests, which must be reviewed for legitimacy.

It’s likely that Bing’s request number would be smaller based purely on search market share, but it will no doubt get plenty of requests as well.

Yahoo is also working on a tool.

Image via Bing

June 12, 2014
Bing Is Shutting Down Its Webmaster Forums

Microsoft announced that it is shutting down Bing’s Webmaster Forums as they have apparently not grown in a meaningful way.

As of the end of this month or early next month, the Bing Webmaster Community Forum will be no more.

Senior product manager Duane Forrester wrote on the Bing webmaster blog, “Over the last few years, we’ve had our Webmaster forums up and running. They’ve been around a while now in a few iterations, and like any community, the goal is to grow it to be vibrant and engaging. To foster the deep involvement of experts who help others, creating a community that contributes to improvements and makes its own gravity. There comes a time, however, when you sometimes need to re-evaluate, and once in a while, regroup.”

Bing will be directing users to its Help & How To section and its webmaster blog, which will have weekly posts with open comments.

Those simply having issues with Webmaster Tools are told to use email support.

For everything else, Forrester directs people to WebmasterWorld and similar forums. Bing itself participates at WMW, so that’s probably your best bet for Bing-related threads.

Image via Bing

May 28, 2014
Microsoft Announces New Version Of Windows Called ‘Windows 8.1 with Bing’

Microsoft announced on Friday that some lower cost Windows devices will come with a new edition of Windows called Windows 8.1 with Bing.

Microsoft hardware partners, the company says, will be announcing new Windows devices over the next couple of weeks. With the Windows 8.1 update, it says, it has enabled partners to build lower cost devices with only 1GB of memory and 16GB of storage.

“Windows 8.1 with Bing provides all the same great experiences that Windows 8.1 offers with the Windows 8.1 Update, and comes with Bing as the default search engine within Internet Explorer,” says Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc. “And of course customers will be able to change that setting through the Internet Explorer menu, providing them with control over search engine settings. This new edition will be only be available preloaded on devices from our hardware partners. Some of these devices, in particular tablets, will also come with Office or a one-year subscription to Office 365.”

“The end result is that more people—across consumer and commercial—will have access to an even broader selection of new devices with all the awesomeness that Windows 8.1 provides, and get Office too, all at a really affordable price,” says LeBlanc. “Additionally, as reach expands, the opportunity for developers and their apps also increases.”

So the real only differences here between this new edition of Windows and Windows 8.1 with the most recent update is that Bing is set as the default, and you can’t just buy this version of Windows. It will only come pre-loaded on the upcoming devices from Microsoft’s partners.

Image via Microsoft

May 23, 2014
Bing Ads Report Suite Gets New Geo Location Report

The Bing Ads Report suite and API now features a new geographical location report. This had apparently been an highly requested feature.

“In response to your feedback, we’ve redesigned how location information is displayed in the report to show you exactly which targeting method was used to serve your ad,” says Microsoft’s Fady Khoury in a blog post. “We’ve also gone under the hood to enable this report to incorporate new targeting features when they become available.”

The new version can be found under Targeting. The old version is still there, but is now labeled “old version”.

The old one didn’t clarify between physical location or search location when it came to what was being being served with ads. Now, there’s a column called “Location Type,” which identifies location type by “physical location” or “location of interest”.

Another new column called “Most Specific Location” lets you see the most specific location that was used for targeting.

Khoury offers this scenario to illustrate the helpfulness of the changes:

Let’s say you sell your products only in Seattle, and you’re using the default targeting option for your campaign (“Show ads to people in, searching for, or viewing pages about your targeted location”). You open the new Geo Location report, and you see that 100 ad clicks have a “Physical location” location type and 80 ad clicks have a “Location of interest” location type.

Based on this data, you conclude that a significant amount of people are searching for your business outside of Seattle, and decide to expand your targeting to more areas like Portland to reach out to potentially more interested people.

The new stuff is apparently already available for all advertisers.

Image via Microsoft

May 21, 2014
Bing Now Shows Predictions For The Voice, American Idol & Dancing With The Stars

Microsoft announced announced that it is adding predictions to Bing search results pages for some queries. These are based on data from searches that have taken place and social input from Facebook and Twitter.

Bing will show such predictions for shows like The Voice, American Idol, and Dancing With the Stars.

“One of the most interesting aspects of search engines is their ability to process trillions of signals to reflect what is happening in the real world,” says Bing. “For instance, during the presidential elections, Bing experiences a surge of positive and negative queries about the presidential candidates from different parts of the U.S. Taking this model even further, teams within Bing have been experimenting with useful ways that we can harness the power of Bing to model outcomes of events. This could be anything from an election or sporting event to whether an actor will win the People’s Choice Award.”

The feature will work when you search for a supported show, or a contestant.

“The central idea behind the direct approach is that winners and losers correspond to popularity,” Bing says. “In broad strokes, we define popularity as the frequency and sentiment of searches combined with social signals and keywords. Placing these signals into our model, we can predict the outcome of an event with high confidence. For The Voice, our model is tuned to account for biases, such as regional preferences, and other measurable and observable trends. We have also learned how to combine the prior popularity of a contestant with the contribution due to his or her performance. Although we might believe that the outcome of this week’s The Voice comes down to how well someone belts out a tune, our data indicates that many people have ‘favorites’ regardless of individual week-to-week performances.”

Bing says users can expect more of this beyond the shows mentioned in the future.

Image via Bing

April 21, 2014
Yahoo Appears To Be Testing Its Own Version Of Knowledge Graph

Yahoo appears to be testing a new type of search results that resemble Google’s Knowledge Graph and Bing’s version of that.

The test was spotted by All Google Testing (via Search Engine Land), which shared this look:

Here’s what it looks like for a search for “Apple,” followed by Google’s and Bing’s results for the same query for comparison:

As you can see, the look is quite similar, though Yahoo’s results are a bit different. They have, at least for these examples, a “Top Products” section for those looking to do some shopping. There’s also a “You may also like” section, which puts competitors right in front of users. It’s also missing some of the info provided by the other search engines like stock price, CEO, founded date, etc.

It’s worth noting that a search for Apple first took me to a page showcasing a local search result box on the right side pointing me to the local Apple store. I had to click another box to take me to the Apple results pictured.

All Google also has some steps for enabling the test yourself, though some have had trouble getting it to work.

While it’s just a test, Yahoo would do well to have this kind of thing if it’s going to make a legitimate case for replacing Google on iOS. It also recently replaced its local business reviews with those from Yelp, which could also help (though some businesses are pretty frustrated with the change).

Images via YouTube, Google, Bing

April 21, 2014
Schema.org Enters Its ‘Next Chapter’

In 2011, Google, Microsoft (Bing) and Yahoo, the big three search engines (Yandex later joined), teamed up to launch Schema.org, an initiative to support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on webpages.

This week, the companies announced the introduction of vocabulary to let sites describe actions they enable and how said actions can be invoked.

“When we launched schema.org almost 3 years ago, our main focus was on providing vocabularies for describing entities — people, places, movies, restaurants, … But the Web is not just about static descriptions of entities. It is about taking action on these entities — from making a reservation to watching a movie to commenting on a post,” says a blog post from Google’s Jason Douglas and Sam Goto, Microsoft’s Steve Macbeth and Jason Johnson, Yandex’s Alexander Shubin, and Yahoo’s Peter Mika.

They refer to the new vocabulary as “the next chapter of schema.org and structured data on the web.”

“The new actions vocabulary is the result of over two years of intense collaboration and debate amongst the schema.org partners and the larger Web community,” they write. “Many thanks to all those who participated in these discussions, in particular to members of the Web Schemas and Hydra groups at W3C. We are hopeful that these additions to schema.org will help unleash new categories of applications.”

A couple years ago, Google’s Matt Cutts put out a video discussing schema.org markup as a ranking signal.

“Just because you implement schema.org doesn’t mean you necessarily rank higher,” he said. “But there are some corner cases like if you were to type in ‘lasagna,’ and then click over on the left-hand side and click on ‘recipes,’ that’s the sort of thing where using schema.org markup might help, because then you’re more likely to be showing up in that at all. So there are some cases where it can be helpful to use schema.org markup.”

Here’s an overview document that covers what exactly is changing.

In February, Schema.org introduced sorts vocabulary. A couple months prior to that, it announced markup for TV and radio.

Via SemanticWeb

Image via Schema.org

April 18, 2014
Bing’s Answer To Google Now Comes To The Desktop

Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it is launching personalized cards on the Bing Homepage, which will let users keep track of news, weather, flights, stocks, and eventually more. Kind of like an early version of Google Now on the desktop, only Bing.

The personalization utilizes technology that the company uses in its Cortana offering for Windows Phone 8.1. Users can set up their interests in the Bing settings.

You just need to sign into your Microsoft account, set up the interests, and then Bing will let you know about things when “appropriate”. It uses the examples of delayed flights or stock changes.

“The best part?” Bing program manager Chen Fang writes. “As long as you’re signed in, Bing will remember your interests and notify you, as appropriate, across a range of Bing-powered Microsoft services, such as Cortana and the Bing Sports app, for example.”

This is obviously Bing’s answer to Google Now, which recently made its way to the desktop as well. Google has added a lot of features and cards to its offering since first launching, and it sounds like Bing will do the same.

Remember when Google had a personalized homepage?

Images via Bing

April 16, 2014
Bing Launches ‘Knowledge Widget’ For Webmasters, App Linking

Microsoft has launched the Bing Knowledge Widget for webmasters and publishers. It detects and visualizes entities on your webpage, and displays rich info about the entity, providing site visitors with info about the said entities on the page. If they hover over the objects you’ve selected in the back-end, they will see the widget’s display on the right-hand side of the screen like so:

These are customizable, but come with pre-defined options for entity images, entity images and links or just entity links.

“When you have chosen a visualization option that includes entity links, you can set the link style associated with these entity links,” Bing says. “You can select from a number of pre-defined options or provide a name that you have defined yourself. Without getting into all of the set-up details, which can be fully explored on the dedicated Bing Knowledge Widget Help & How To page, the Knowledge Widget enables you to create a unique user experience for your visitors, which you control, and that is powered by Bing’s knowledge repository.”

The company also announced App Linking functionality for businesses.

“Bing Webmaster Tools will be your interface to linking your website to your app,” it says. “Bing App Linking lets you connect your app to your web site so that search results for the top level of your web site include a link to your app. If you implement deep linking, search results for pages within your web site will include deep links to targets inside your app.”

Google has also expanded its app indexing initiative, announcing nearly 25 new apps it is now indexing.

Image via Microsoft

April 4, 2014
Bing Introduces Image Match To Sift Through Image Sizes

Bing wants you to imagine a scenario. You’re sitting at home searching for images of Mt. Everest because you have nothing better to do with your life. Against all odds, you find that your life is slowly improving as you see more images of this majestic mountain. Suddenly, you find the perfect image and you want to make it your desktop wallpaper. Unfortunately, its resolution is much too small. You could search for “Mt. Everest 1920×1080,” but who has time for that? With Bing’s new feature, it does it for you.

Bing announced today that it’s introducing a new feature in image search called Image Match. The new feature has you choosing an image and then clicking on the image match button. From there, Bing will present you with a page of the same image in various sizes ranging from wallpaper to small.

If you want even more options, you can click on view all sizes to see a full page of the same image in various sizes. This is especially helpful if you’re looking for a specific resolution.

That’s all well and good, but what if you find an image outside of Bing? Well, you can hit up Bing Images, click on image match and then put the image URL into the search field. From there, Bing will try to find every instance of that image on the Web. You can also upload images from your PC and Bing will go fetch more sizes of said image.

Bing says Image Match is available now, but it’s still not showing up for me. It may be one of those gradual rollouts so keep an eye out for it.

Image via Bing Search Blog

March 13, 2014
Xbox One Gets Bing Web Search Today

Are you finding your Xbox One search experience a bit underwhelming? Sure, you can use Bing to search through your console’s online marketplace, but the same can’t be said for the Web. Well, that’s all changing this week.

In the latest Xbox One system update, Bing Web Search was added to the console. In other words, you can now search the Web from the comfort of your couch using voice commands via Bing. To search the Web, you merely have to say the magic words – “Xbox Bing” – and then continue with your query. The app will now bring up results from your console as well as an option to search the Web.

Here’s what it will look like:

In the latest update, you can now also launch searches from within Internet Explorer. You just simply have to highlight text on a Web page and press the menu button to launch a search through Bing.

Bing also notes that a previous update has helped improve the voice search functionality on the Xbox One. When using voice search, the Xbox One will show “what you are saying while the search [is] conducted in parallel.”

The updates to Bing Web Search is just one of many new features hitting the Xbox One today as part of a system update. For more on that, check out Microsoft’s blog post.

March 5, 2014
Bing Saves Is Now Available To All In Open Beta

Have you ever thought to yourself, “Man, I wish I could bookmark this Web site in anything other than my browser?” You probably haven’t, but Bing thinks you might have.

Last month, Bing introduced a new feature called Bing Saves. It’s essentially a bookmarking feature within Bing that allowed you to save Web sites to your Microsoft account and visit them later. The logic behind this appears to be that you might want to save some Web sites for later use, but don’t feel they’re important enough to warrant a bookmark in your browser.

When it first launched, Bing Saves was only available to a select number of people. Search Engine Land points out that the beta is now available to all so you can start saving Web sites.

If you feel the need to use Bing Saves, you simply have to visit the Web site. From there, you’ll see a list of trending Web sites and a Public Feed of saved Web sites. To start adding personal bookmarks, you just need to add the “Save on Bing” button to your Web browser.

The Bing Saves feature is still in beta, but it will probably become a real product. After all, a similar feature has already been added to the Bing mobile app. In the recently updated Bing app for iOS, you can now bookmark search results for later use.

Image via Bing

March 4, 2014
Windows 8.1 Might Be Getting A Free Version [Report]

Windows 8 wasn’t the renaissance Microsoft hoped it would be. Sure, the total number of Windows 8 users steadily increases every month, but it has no chance of toppling Windows 7 at this point. One reason for that is that consumers don’t want to pay $100 or more to upgrade. Microsoft might soon be remedying this.

ZDNet reports that Microsoft is currently looking into a free version of Windows 8.1 called Windows 8.1 with Bing. It’s reportedly part of a grand experiment as Microsoft sees the writing on the wall – operating systems will one day be free. The company will have to adapt to this reality before it happens, and that’s where Windows 8.1 with Bing comes in.

So, what is Windows 8.1 with Bing? Well, nobody is exactly sure at this point, but they have some ideas. One theory is that it’s an experiment into a free version of Windows 8 that would only come with Bing services. All the other applications you usually get with Windows, like Skype, OneDrive and Office, would all be available as paid-for add-ons. In other words, Windows 8 would be free while applications can be added on through separate purchases as needed.

If this turned out to be true, it could be a major turn around for Microsoft. There are PC users out there, especially PC gamers, who want the benefits of Windows 8, but don’t want to pay for it. This would allow them to get the operating system while being able to pick and choose which applications they want. It’s actually kind of brilliant and something that a lot of people could get behind.

Still, it’s important to note that this is all preliminary and Microsoft is said to only be experimenting with the idea at the moment. It could come to the conclusion that a free version of Windows 8.1 isn’t worth its time. It would be unfortunate if it came to that conclusion, however, as Windows is currently on the defensive against a number of free alternatives, including Mac OS X, Chrome OS and Android.

Image via Windows Blog

February 28, 2014
Bing, OneDrive Team Up For Bing Rewards Promotion

Can two segments of the same company team up? Aren’t they already a team? These are the questions we must ask ourselves as Bing teams up with OneDrive for a new promotion.

Bing announced today that Bing Rewards members can use 100 credits to snag 100GB of free OneDrive storage for a year. That much storage usually costs $50 per year, but OneDrive is confident you’ll use Bing for at least a few days to rack up those credits to get free storage.

For those unaware, OneDrive is the cloud hosting service formerly known as SkyDrive. Microsoft announced the name change back in January after it had decided to change the name instead of fighting over a trademark claim by UK network provider SkyBB. This is actually the second time Microsoft has had to change a product name with the Windows 8 Metro UI name being changed to the far less interesting “Windows 8 UI” after a trademark claim was filed by Metro – a German retail outlet.

So, how good is OneDrive’s offer of 100GB of storage compare to other services? First things first, you might want to go with the offer if you already have 100 Bing Rewards credits. There’s nothing else of value to get unless you just want to donate a lot of money to charity. If you don’t have Bing Rewards or don’t want to save, there are some alternatives.

First, Google Drive now offers 15GB of free storage. That storage is shared across both Drive and Gmail so you’re good if you don’t use email all that much. Another popular alternative is Dropbox which offers up to 18GB of free space, but there’s a catch. You get 500MB of storage for every friend referred so you’ll have to find and sign up 32 friends. The company also hosts a number of promotions around the year that can net you additional free space.

In short, the Bing Rewards offer is probably the best way to get a lot of free storage. It just requires to build up Bing Rewards credits which can be earned through searching the Web via Bing. You’ll get 20 free credits for opening an account so might as well start now if you really want 100GB of online storage.

Image via OneDrive/YouTube

February 26, 2014
The Bing iOS App Just Got A Meaty Update

With iOS using Bing as its default search provider, you may have found yourself enamored by all that Bing has to offer. You might have even downloaded the official Bing iOS app. If that’s the case, you’ll discover that it now has some new features.

Bing announced this week that its iOS app has been updated with a number of new features. All of the additions were based upon feedback it received from iOS users so you just might see something that you specifically asked for.

First up, Bing for iOS now has a “pervasive widget that is always available within the app” for searches. In other words, you can always reach the search page no matter where you are in the app with a simple tap. If the widget is getting in your way, you can also disable it in the settings.

Next up, Bing has added a feature that lets users manage multiple searches at once. You can think of it like a Web browser with multiple tabs open, but Bing just keeps your most recent searches in memory for easy access later. Here’s what it looks like:

If you’re more of a person who follows trends, the new Bing app also has you covered. When looking at Bing Trends, each trend will now have its own tile:

With its latest update, Bing also plays friendly with Safari. From within the app, you can open a link in Safari or you can even bookmark it for later use.

The final feature is more fun than anything as it allows you to shake your phone will the app’s open and it will return a random search result based upon currently trending topics. You can think of it as a more restricted version of StumbleUpon where the only topics available are those seen as trending by Bing’s community of searchers.

If you want to give Bing for iOS a try, you can find it here.

Image via Bing

February 25, 2014
Bing Adds Timelines To Search Results

Timelines are like the cliff notes of history. They give us a succinct look into the events that shaped the lives of the people around us. Now they’re coming to Bing.

Bing announced today that its adding timelines for famous people to its side bar search results. The timeline will offer up a brief history of the person’s life through a list of events that helped shape who they were/are. Here’s an example of what it will look like:

Interestingly enough, Bing will not be sharing Timelines for famous persons whose works are more searched for than their lives. For example, musician and actor searches will return their body of works instead of a timeline as Bing’s algorithm has found that those searching for these people are more interested in their work than their lives. Here’s an example:

Bing says its algorithms have generated timelines for about 500,000 famous people so far. More will be added in the future, but let’s see if Bing returns a timeline for some lesser known and foreign famous folks:

Todd Smith – Frontman for Dog Fashion Disco and Polkadot Cadaver

Willard Scott – Creator of Ronald McDonald

Masamune Shirow – Author of Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell

Two out of three – Bing isn’t doing so bad for itself at all. With over 500,000 timelines already created, you might need to redefine what it means to be famous to find somebody who has yet to have a timeline.

Image via Bing

February 21, 2014
Bing Launches 3 New Windows Phone Apps

Microsoft just announced the launch of three new Bing Apps for Windows Phone 8: Bing Food & Drink, Bing Health & Fitness and Bing Travel.

Bing Food & Drink includes 600,000 recipes, a wine guide to 1.5 million different bottles, and a one-click “add to shopping list” feature, which roams between mobile and Windows 8.1.

The Health & Fitness app lets users browse over 1,000 exercise and workout videos, includes a nutritional and medical reference feature, and offers trackers for diet and cardio.

Bing Travel lets users book flights and hotels, find nearby attractions and look at photography of over 2,000 destinations.

The apps are now available in the Windows Phone Store.

Microsoft is also releasing big updates to its other Windows Phone apps: Finance, News, Sports and Weather, which enable roaming across Windows devices.

“Now, the personalized Bing apps preferences and settings associated with your Microsoft Account will seamlessly sync across your PC, tablet, and Windows Phone for all seven Bing apps,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews.

New Bing Apps on Windows Phone from Bing on Vimeo.

Images via Microsoft

February 18, 2014
Mayer Reportedly ‘Hates’ Microsoft Deal

It’s been increasingly clear that Yahoo isn’t happy in its “Search Alliance” with Microsoft, a deal that is to last a total of ten years (it was announced in ’09) if it plays out.

Last month, Kara Swisher, frequent bearer of juicy Yahoo gossip and memo leakery, reported that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is plotting an exit strategy rom the deal with two internal projects codenamed “Fast Break” and “Curveball”. Now she’s reporting a little bit more:

According to people with more detailed knowledge of the plans, Mayer is trying to consolidate it all internally in a plan that is being called the “three S’s” — Stream, Shopping and Search. But rather than focusing on the Web and keywords, which Yahoo is contractually bound to allow Microsoft to serve under a 10-year search and advertising partnership deal, Mayer is aiming all this toward mobile and contextual search.

Swisher also notes that source told her Mayer “hates” the Microsoft deal and will get out of it the minute she finds a way to “without committing suicide”.

Mayer hasn’t been too shy about her feelings about the deal, though her disdain for it has apparently been toned down in a bit in public settings.

In December, it came out that Yahoo was getting 31% of its revenue from the deal. Last April, Microsoft extended its revenue guarantee to Yahoo, but that’s set to expire in March. It could (and most likely will) be renewed again.

Image via Tumblr

February 17, 2014
Bing Code Search Comes To Visual Studio

When writing code in Visual Studio, you may find that you have to pull code samples from StackOverflow or MSDN. You would normally just have to copy and paste the code over and then make some modifications so it fits in with your previously written code. Now Microsoft is making it easier to do through Bing.

The Bing team announced today that it has worked with the Visual Studio and Microsoft Research teams to develop what it calls the Bing Code Search Visual Studio extension. As its name implies, it’s a new extension that uses Bing to find “relevant code samples in Visual Studio providing you with the ability to review and add that code in the code editor.” The Bing team notes that searches are context sensitive so you’ll get samples that use the same variable names in your own code.

Bing says Code Search pulls from MSDN, StackOverflow, Donnetperls and CSharp411. Here’s how it works:

Bing uses signals and metadata including project type and semantic context (e.g. C#/VB compiler) combined with our vast index to deliver relevant code samples directly into the Visual Studio experience. In a few short clicks, you have a set of code snippets for review and copy into the Visual Studio editor without missing a beat.

If you want to see Bing Code Search in action, you can watch a video of it being used here. Unfortunately, there’s no embed just yet, but I’ll update this story with one if Microsoft Research ever bothers to upload it to YouTube.

If you feel your life would be greatly improved through the use of Bing Code Search, you can download the extension here.

Image via Visual Studio Blog

February 17, 2014
Bing: Atlanta Is The Nation’s Leader In Romantic Searches

What’s a romantic search? Is it a Web search for a dating site? Or perhaps tips on how to set up the perfect date? Whatever they are, Bing is tracking them.

Bing revealed on Wednesday that it has tracked romantic searches across the nation and compiled a list of the cities that search for romance the most. Atlanta, Georgia came out on top with the most romantic searches with Washington, D.C. and Detroit, Michigan trailing behind in second and third place respectively.

Once again, Bing doesn’t come out and say what exactly constitutes a romantic search. We’ll just leave what Georgians and Washington, D.C. residents think is romantic up to the imagination then.

As for the least romantic cities, Tampa Bay, Florida leads the pack as retirement villages are probably not brimming with romance. Following it are Austin, Texas and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in second and third place respectively.

For a full list of the most romantic and least romantic cities in the states, check out the map below:

Alongside romantic searches, Bing has also compiled a list of the most searched for dating sites. As expected, the top three are Plenty of Fish, Match.com and OK Cupid. Here’s the full list:

1. Plenty of Fish
2. Match.com
3. OK Cupid
4. Christian Mingle
5. Zoosk
6. OurTime
7. eHarmony
8. Badoo
9. Datehookup.com
10. SpeedDate.com

For those of you who are lonely on Valentine’s Day, you might just start searching for famous couples to stare longingly at and wonder why you’re such a dateless loser. To make it easier on you, Bing has a collection of the top 10 most searched for couples as well:

1. Victoria and David Beckham
2. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West
3. Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth
4. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
5. Faith Hill and Tim McGraw
6. Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen
7. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson
8. Kate Middleton and Prince William
9. Jay Z and Beyoncé
10. Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake

On a final note, Bing has reduced the cost of the $15 ProFlowers eCoupon on its Bing Rewards site. The reward normally costs 525 credits, but it’s now only 100 credits up through February 15.

February 13, 2014
Bing Says It’s Not Censoring Chinese Search Results In The U.S.

If you know anything about the Internet, you’re well aware of the Great Firewall of China. The country polices what its citizens can and can not see on the Internet which means search engines wanting to operate in the country must censor their own results. Bing, being a search engine that operates in China, must censor its results like everybody else. What happens when Bing starts censoring in other countries as well though?

On Tuesday, The Guardian reported that Bing was censoring search results in the U.S. for searches made in simplified Chinese. The censored topics included the usual subjects, like the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square and other taboo topics that the Chinese government would rather its citizenry not see. The same search made in English would result in Bing returning the usual results you would expect in the U.S.

As you can imagine, this is all very troubling for a number of reasons. The most prominent being Chinese users in other parts of the world or those using VPNs to get around the Great Firewall would no longer get uncensored search results when using Bing. The Guardian also noted that these censored results wouldn’t tell you they were censored whereas searches made in China do.

Since the story broke, Bing has come out and said that they don’t censor search results unless the IP originated from inside China. Speaking to the Verge, Stefan Weitz, senior director of Bing, says that the censored results were the result of an error. Under normal operation, Bing would return uncensored results even if the one searching had their location set to China. As long as the IP doesn’t originate from within the mainland, the search results should be censorship free.

Of course, such a story can’t escape the ever watchful eye of our favorite Taiwanese animators. Here’s their take on it:

Image via Taiwanese Animators/YouTube

February 12, 2014