Bing Travel Adds Attraction Answers, Gives Destination One-Boxes

Following yesterday’s massive rollout of several Bing search enhancements, one of their new content features, Attraction Answers, is fully functional today. Intended to complement over 3,000 new destination guides for cities around the world, Attraction Answers also offers more details on over 60,000 tourist attractions worldwide, with approximately 20,000 attractions across the US. The attractions […]

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Following yesterday’s massive rollout of several Bing search enhancements, one of their new content features, Attraction Answers, is fully functional today. Intended to complement over 3,000 new destination guides for cities around the world, Attraction Answers also offers more details on over 60,000 tourist attractions worldwide, with approximately 20,000 attractions across the US.

The attractions data, as well as the destination information is being provided by Frommer’s, so in many cases, you’ll be given links to the official attraction site, as well as a link to Frommer’s guidebook page to those destinations and attractions.

According to Bing, Attraction Answers are a quick snapshot of attractions for a specific destination in the SERP, while Destination Pages are a deeper look into the local area that includes travel information such as flight search and weather, as well as videos, images and events.

In reality, Attraction Answers don’t seem to appear as part of Bing Travel at all. If you’re on Bing.com/Travel, and you’re looking for information about “Boston, Ma”, you’ll get redirected back to the main Bing web search, rather than redirecting you to the new “Destinations” tab within Bing Travel.

So at first, you’ll  see a nice snapshot of Boston travel information at the top of the SERP:

Boston DEST Onebox

But you’ll notice that the ‘web’ results have travel related tabs. If you click on that “Destinations” tab, you’ll get an expanded view for Boston, Ma:

BostonDESTPAGE

If users click on anything in the “Attractions” box, they go directly to Frommers. But, users who do a related search for “Things to do in Boston, MA”, you’ll get “one-box’ style results for both upcoming events (which is quite handy) and then further down, integrated “Attraction Answers”:

Things To Do Boston Ma2

Now, if you click on any one of those Attraction Answers, for example “Paul Revere’s House“, you’ll be looking at a new set of Bing web results, with additional Attraction information, including useful data such as a link to Bing Maps, hours and official website URL:

Paul Revere House

The destination and attraction ‘one boxes’ are dynamically generated by the query, so the search experience and content can vary significantly by the information available. In the early planning stages, it might be very helpful to go down the path of many ‘attraction options’, as well as that quick glance at airfares.

Depending on the type of travel researcher, this may be helpful to many for inspiration. Others might get frustrated that it’s a constant loop, which often ends you at Frommer’s, which of course, does have some of the most comprehensive guidebook information.

But the feature is most useful when the query is more specific, and the SERPs present the quick one-box answers, perhaps more helpful right before a trip occurs or while actually visiting a given destination.

Also see our overview article on recent Bing changes announced this week, Bing Releases Huge Set of Upgrades: Maps, Local, Mobile, Travel, Image Search.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Elisabeth Osmeloski
Contributor
Elisabeth Osmeloski was Director of Audience Development for Search Engine Land and MarTech. She was responsible for increasing readership through owned, earned and paid media channels. In addition, she assists in programming sessions at Third Door Media's Search Marketing Expo conference series and manages speaking engagements for editorial staff. Follow her on Twitter @elisabethos.

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