Bing has announced an alliance with Encyclopedia Britannica that will see the search engine present snippets of encyclopedic information related to user queries directly within its organic search results.
This system will have a quick overview of the topic a user searches for, coupled with a thumbnail image and other quick facts relevant to the topic the user searched for. From here the user can choose from a list of online encyclopedias like Britannica, Freebase, Qwiki, and Wikipedia.
Bing stated that the overall purpose of their partnership with Britannica is to deliver relevant information in a way that helps users find useful information quickly.
Is this a direct answer to Google’s Knowledge Graph results? Not exactly.
Rather than appearing prominently to the right of Bing’s search results (where it could easily be showcased in the new “Snapshot” column of Bing’s recently redesigned results), the Britannica answers appear within the organic search results. Also, Bing doesn’t try to send users to a variety of other searches, for instance.
Bing has taken its first step to deliver more informative search results. For students, bloggers, businessmen and other Internet users this tool will definitely be useful.