Bing can now answer queries with a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’

Bing can now return a “Yes” or “No” answer for certain queries, the company announced Tuesday. The new search feature includes the one-word answer as well as a carousel of related excerpts from various sources.

What it looks like. This was the top result for the query “can dogs eat chocolate” prior to the change.

The new yes/no summary result now looks like this:

Certain queries will also trigger an option to refine the search for a more specific answer, as seen above. Clicking on one of the refined search options takes you to the results for that query, which may also display the yes/no summary. This feature is currently live in the U.S. and will eventually expand to more markets.

How it works. In the example above, Natural Language Representation (NLR) modeling enables Bing to infer that “chocolate is toxic to dogs” means dogs cannot eat chocolate, despite sources not explicitly stating so.

To create this feature, Bing began with a pre-trained language model that it adjusted to perform two separate, complementary tasks: assessing the relevance of document passages in relation to the search query, and providing a definitive “Yes” or “No” answer by ingesting and summarizing multiple sources.

Why we care. This new search feature provides users with a concise answer as well as a number of sources highlighted in the accompanying carousel. Webmasters and SEOs should keep track of the keywords they’re currently ranking for that trigger this feature, and monitor how their impressions and traffic shift with the change.

About The Author

George Nguyen

George Nguyen is an editor for Search Engine Land, covering organic search, podcasting and e-commerce. His background is in journalism and content marketing. Prior to entering the industry, he worked as a radio personality, writer, podcast host and public school teacher.