People Autosuggest feature on Bing expanded to include more categories

The People Autosuggest feature on Bing now allows users to look up brands, movies, albums, places, software, sport teams, animal species and more, courtesy an update.

Antonio Gulli, Principal Development Manager, Bing, explains this better with an example. Say, you’re looking up the word “pitbull” on Bing, the results will feature references to both the artiste and the dog breed (see image below).

Looking for pitbull?

“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,” Gulli adds.

He goes on to explain that Bing makes this happen thanks to an underlying technology they call Satori. Gulli claims that Satori “understands the relationships between millions of people, places and things providing you with a more useful model of the digital and physical world.”

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In a similar way, if you’re looking for “Harry Potter” on Bing, then the search results will feature references to the literary series, the character and a list of movie titles.

The People Autosuggest feature already allows users to quickly look for people from within the search box. If you’re looking for a celebrity, athlete or even a colleague with a LinkedIn profile on Bing, it will provide you brief information about that person below the search bar. Thanks to the update, the autosuggest feature will now allow users to look for more things within these additional categories.