Bing has a chatbot answering local search questions

Bing has added a chatbot to help users with some of its local search results for restaurants in the Seattle area. After getting a tip from a reader, I was able to reproduce the chatbot option in Bing’s desktop search results, but not in its iOS app nor in the mobile browser search results.

The new feature appears at the bottom of the listing for some individual restaurants in the cities of Redmond (where Microsoft is based) and nearby Bellevue, Washington — both are just outside of Seattle. I’ve seen it on about 6-8 different searches for specific restaurants, such as Monsoon in Bellevue. Below the regular business information is an invitation — Questions? Ask Monsoon bot for help — with a “Chat” call-to-action button to the right.

Clicking the button pops open a chat window that says it’s powered by Microsoft-owned Skype, and perhaps because I have a Skype account and the software on my desktop computer, the chat window recognizes me by name.

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]