{"id":7704,"date":"2017-04-05T20:47:27","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T20:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fixmyinfo.com\/?p=7704"},"modified":"2017-04-11T20:12:49","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T20:12:49","slug":"bing-chatbot-answering-local-search-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fixmyinfo.com\/bing-chatbot-answering-local-search-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Bing has a chatbot answering local search questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Matt McGee<\/a>\u00a0for SearchEngineLand<\/a><\/h4>\n

Skype-powered chatbot is showing up as an assistant to help searchers learn about restaurants in the Seattle area.<\/h2>\n

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\u2019s desktop search results, but not in its iOS app nor in the mobile browser search results.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 both are just outside of Seattle. I\u2019ve seen it on about six to eight different searches for specific restaurants, such as Monsoon in Bellevue<\/a>. Below the regular business information is an invitation \u2014 Questions? Ask Monsoon bot for help<\/em> \u2014 with a \u201cChat\u201d call-to-action button to the right.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n Clicking the button pops open a chat window that says it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no immediate help or guide telling me what kinds of questions I can ask, so the chat experience is clunky at first. But once you get started, the chatbot offers a number of different questions you can ask, including these:<\/p>\n