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Bing Gets Its Own Knowledge Graph Via Britannica Partnership

Matt McGee on June 7, 2012 at 4:29 pm

Bing’s search results are getting a bit more informational thanks to a new partnership with Encyclopedia Britannica.

They’re calling it “Britannica Online Encyclopedia Answers,” and it adds extra information about a search result right within the search results page. As the screenshots below show, it looks quite a bit like Google’s recently-launched Knowledge Graph feature, but there are some differences that I’ll mention below.

I’ve used red arrows to highlight one of the main differences with how Google presents this data and Bing’s version — Bing links out to several third-party sites for further information, such as Wikipedia, Freebase, Qwiki and Britannica (the source of the encyclopedic information). In Google’s Knowledge Graph presentation, the links primarily lead to new Google searches.

Some other noticeable differences, all of which I believe are related:

Bing is currently showing these Britannica-powered listings far less often than Google shows Knowledge Graph boxes.
Bing seems to show the Britannica information only if a Britannica URL appears as one of the organic search results.
Bing’s display happens right with the organic search result, while Google shows Knowledge Graph boxes to the right of the organic results

Bing, of course, could eventually change its display for these Britannica results, but that’s what I’m seeing now.

On the searches where I found the Britannica-enhanced results, they were down the search results page, mixed in at whatever spot Britannica.com was ranking for the keyword. Other online encyclopedia sites, like Wikipedia and the New World Encyclopedia also showed up in the search results, often above Britannica.com.

About The Author

Matt McGee

Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.