Enterprise applications Toolkit

Bing integrates Wolfram Alpha results

Tom Espiner ZDNet UK

Published: 12 Nov 2009 14:45 GMT

Microsoft has integrated results from the Wolfram Alpha computation engine into its Bing search engine.

Bing is one of Wolfram Alpha's first application programming interface (API) customers, Wolfram Alpha developer relations architect Schoeller Porter said in a blog post on Wednesday.

"Wolfram Alpha's knowledge, computed from expertly curated data, will enrich Bing's results in select areas across nutrition, health and advanced mathematics," said Porter. "By using our API, Bing will be able to seamlessly access the tens of thousands of algorithms and trillions of pieces of data from Wolfram Alpha, and directly incorporate the computations in its search results."

Wolfram Alpha, which went live in May, allows users to query the engine to obtain statistical and other data around a search term.

The three topic areas Bing will use Wolfram Alpha for are queries about the nutritional values of foodstuffs, body mass index calculations and mathematical computation, Microsoft said in a blog post on Wednesday.

The Wolfram Alpha integration joins the Twitter and Facebook alliances with Bing that were announced in October.

Google, the search engine market leader, is also evolving its offering. The Google Caffeine infrastructure, which the company says will offer faster and more accurate search, should be fully deployed in early 2010, Google said on Tuesday.

Microsoft had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.