Britannica Entries To Appear In Bing Search Results

Bing, the search engine developed by Microsoft, is partnering up with the oldest English language encyclopaedia to include Britannica Online answers directly in the search results page, the company announced on Thursday.

The deal is expected to help Bing compete against Google and its Knowledge Graph, launched in May.

Answer to the ultimate question

The new Britannica answers will provides a quick overview of the subject, a thumbnail image, and a few useful facts and figures. For example, an entry on a plant would show its classification, where an organisation would have the year it was founded.

The summary box will also contain direct links to Wikipedia, Freebase, Qwiki and other trusted information sources.

Search Engine Land blogger Matt McGee has discovered that unlike Google’s Knowledge Graph, a Britannica summary box only appears if a relevant Britannica entry is included somewhere in search results. Because of this, the sightings of the summary box are pretty rare, and are mostly relevant to academic searches.

“We’re very excited to collaborate with Encyclopaedia Britannica as it continues to strengthen its online presence, and hope you find these new answers valuable and helpful in your search for information,” said Franco Salvetti, principal development lead at Bing.

In March, after 244 years in print, Encyclopaedia Britannica abandoned its paper edition to go completely digital. It first started posting content online back in 1994.

Britannica is famous for being one of the most scholarly encyclopaedias in the world. It is continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert contributors, which include many scholars, Nobel Prize laureates and world leaders, such as Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu, Ian Rankin, Jody Williams and Tony Hawk.

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