A Bing spokesperson explains, “Say you’re searching for Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber, you’ll see in the News Carousel images of stories related to them, such as Bieber losing custody of his Capuchin monkey to the German government. On the right-hand side of the page you’ll also see related people that might be of interest because they have some sort of relationship to your query.

“To do this Bing is leveraging the Satori technology that brings a deep understanding of the relationships between people, places and things to power the visual carousel that makes it easy to explore current events and other people related to the person you are searching for,” he adds.

Satori, which means “Understanding” in Japanese, is basically Bing’s version of Google’s Knowledge Graph, and powers Bing’s Snapshot experience, as described here.

“And that’s not the only progress we’ve made over at Bing News. We recently extended our news articles index beyond two weeks,” says Bing’s Tim Leung on the Bing blog. “This means when there’s no fresh news related to a given query, we can look back over several years to bring you any relevant articles. This is a pretty significant update and is just the start as we work to make Bing News even more comprehensive. While there’s still more to do, we believe these updates provide you with a deeper understanding of the world and an opportunity to explore the connections we’re able to make over here at Bing.”

More on the blog.

Bing is reportedly adding the Klingon language to Bing Translator as part of a marketing deal between Microsoft and Paramount, as the studio prepares to release Star Trek Into Darkness.

While we’ve been unable to bring up the language in Bing Translator so far, The LA Times (via Engadget) reports that it is coming today:

The Bing service will translate text written in any one of 41 supported languages — including English, French, Hebrew and Urdu — into Klingon. Fear not, native Klingon speakers: words or phrases written in that language can be translated into the more than three dozen available tongues.

According to the report, Microsoft engineer helped develop the feature, has he apparently speaks Klingon. The LA Times shares a quote from Bing’s Craig Beilinson: “We have people who understand the deep science of linguistics and we also have people who are passionate about the ‘Star Trek’ franchise. This was a labor of love from a lot of different avenues.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the Klingon Language utilized by a major search engine. You can still see the Google Klingon homepage here.

Star Trek Into Darkness releases in the U.S. on May 17th.

Image: StarTrek.com

In cases where there are multiple people with the same name, it will ask which one you meant:

The feature is part of Bing’s “snapshot” pane, which Bing launched last year.

“The goal of Bing’s Snapshot feature – our center column on the main results page – is to help people find information they need to understand their world,” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “With the people category as the second largest searched on Bing, we’re giving you another way to find people faster and directly from the search box.”

According to Dan Marantz, Lead Program Manager for Bing Query Formulation UX, people searches are the second most searched for category, after navigational queries, and account for roughly 10% of queries on Bing.

“In the milliseconds between keystrokes, Bing lets you narrow down your search by clicking on the correct person,” he says. “If Bing has information on a person, we let you know by displaying it below the search box. In some instances, multiple people share the same name. When this happens, we’ll provide information for the most relevant people with that name, and help you narrow down your search.”

The new autosuggest feature was co-developed By the Search Technological Center in London.

The feature appears to be in the process or rolling out.

“Bing already lets you view Facebook updates and comments from your friends in sidebar, but now you’ll also be able to add your own Likes and comments to your friends’ Facebook posts directly from Bing,” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “This is yet another step in Bing’s efforts to make it easier for people to leverage all of the incredible information across the web and content within their social networks to help them spend less time searching and more time doing.”

“Say you’re a huge Beyoncé fan and are searching Bing to see what she’s up to, such as the latest on her trip to Cuba,” the spokesperson says. “While searching, you see a post in Bing’s sidebar from a Facebook friend who has an extra ticket to the sold out Beyoncé concert this week. With Bing, you can now comment on your friend’s Facebook post in one step, directly in sidebar, and claim the extra ticket. You’ve gone from simply browsing for news to attending the concert in one simple step. With Bing’s social search you can connect with your friends and engage with your social world to get things done – all in one spot.”

Of course none of this applies to the “Bing it On” challenge, which Microsoft just kicked off a new campaign for. The site, which lets you do side-by-side blind comparisons between Google and Bing results, strips out special features from each search engine, including Bing’s Facebook integration and Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Bing continues to be a major partner of Facebook’s, also providing the web search results to Facebook’s Graph Search.

Reuters reports:

The U.S. revenue-per-search guarantee, which had expired on March 31, will be extended for one year, and took effect on April 1, Yahoo said in its 10Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.

Extension of the search revenue guarantee marks Yahoo’s first agreement with Microsoft since Marissa Mayer became Chief Executive of Yahoo in July. Mayer, who is seeking to reverse a multi-year decline in Yahoo’s revenue and in its online traffic, has been critical of the Microsoft partnership struck by former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz.

Indeed she has. At the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in February, she expressed her disappointment, saying that they need to see monetization working better, “because we know that it can and we’ve seen other competitors in the space illustrate how well it can work.”

There have been rumors in the past that Yahoo would kill its deal with Microsoft prematurely, but Microsoft has indicated that it would not make it easy for Yahoo to pull out. Of course, there has also been plenty of speculation that Yahoo could try a deal with Google again. Yahoo initially tried to partner with Google, but potential regulatory hurdles led to that falling through and Yahoo settling for Microsoft.

But that was a long time ago, and under different leadership.

The Microsoft Yahoo Search Alliance could still fall apart.

“On March 31, because of the failure with RPS, Yahoo potentially could have terminated its deal with Microsoft on February 23, 2015,” explains Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan. “That’s the five year mark into the ten year agreement, where there’s an out for both sides.”

“That’s still a date to watch, but April 1, 2014 is more important,” he adds. “If Microsoft fails to deliver for a third time, maybe by then, Yahoo will want to move on. Assuming, of course, that US regulatory bodies even allow it to partner with Google.”

Google has cleared some significant regulatory hurdles since it tried to partner with Yahoo before. It would be interesting to see how such a scenario would develop in the future.

In semi-related news, Chitika announced a multi-year extension of its advertising agreement with Yahoo.

“Yahoo! has a proven track record of capitalizing on strong, successful partnerships, helping the organization meet and exceed its business goals,” said Venkat Kolluri, Chitika’s CEO. “Extending and expanding our relationship with Yahoo! reaffirms our commitment to deliver innovative online and mobile ad technology solutions, which will help contribute to the growth of Yahoo!’s search marketplace.”

Bing says in a blog post, “With the newest version of the Challenge site, in addition to search results, you’ll get to learn about a new homepage every day, rollover video preview and instant translation all on the same site – some of our unique features that give you even more reasons to fall in love with Bing.”

They’re kicking off a new nationwide campaign. This time they went to Topeka to ask people if they know that most people prefer Bing search results to Google’s.

“I’m not sure I believe that,” one participant says, before being wowed by the awesomeness that is Bing.

As you may recall, a few years ago, Topeka temporarily adopted the name “Google” for its city in a campaign to get Google Fiber (which ultimately debuted in Kansas City).

“In Google, Kansas, you made me a Bing man,” says one person.

You can try the challenge here. Just remember that the experience is completely different (for both search engines) than when you actually search on Google or Bing, as it strips out key features like Google’s Knowledge Graph and Bing’s social features.

If Bing detects that a site is serving malware (either willingly or unwillingly) it will send a notification to the webmaster in Bing Webmaster Tools, as well as alert users before they actually visit the site.

“The new Malware tool provides information about the malware we detected on the site,” Bing says in a blog post. “Previously some of this information was encompassed in the Crawl Information tool, but with the new Malware tool you not only get access to more details that help you understand the nature of the issue, it also allows webmasters to submit and track a malware re-evaluation request once they have cleaned their site.”

When a webmaster submits a request, they can immediately track the status and progress right inside the malware tool.

With geo-targeting, webmasters can provide Bing with info about the intended audience of their site or of a section of their site.

“Whereas other Webmaster Tools let you geo-target sites only at the site level, Bing Geo-Targeting provides you with a more flexibility: multinational sites do not need to verify each section they want to geo-target separately,” says Bing. “Instead, Bing allows you to define a country affinity for your entire website or for sections of your website from within a single view and from within a single site account.”

Geo-targeting can be done at the domain level, the subdomain level, the directory level or the page level. Geo-targeting input will be used as one of many signals Bing uses when determining when and where to show your pages to users.

The Verge shares two videos from the conference, indicating that the first one is actually two years old (but was shared as part of the presentation). It shows the Bing logo.

The Verge’s Tom Warren writes:

At first it seems the clip is simply an old concept, like similar ones Microsoft has experimented with previously, but later in the presentation Simmons reveals design work for the same Bing logo and what appears to be a future Skype or Yammer brand change (see image above). “Other brands are coming along too,” he notes before the reveal. “Bing, Skype, Yammer, Xbox…everything is under development as well.” Both logos fit Microsoft’s new approach to design, with a flattened look and colors that align well with other products.

So is this Bing logo still on the table? With all the other logo redesigns from Microsoft, it seems like a possibility.

What do you think of it?

Bing senior product manager Ginny Sandhu says, “We know time is in short supply when you are busy running your business. That’s why at Bing we are always looking for ways to simplify your experience of getting your business online and managing your business reputation on the web. The launch of Bing Places for business is the first of many steps in our effort to provide you with all the tools you need to easily and quickly find local customers online.”

“Also as part of our drive to simplify the experience we are retiring a few business promotion and management services that were being previously offered,” says Sandhu. “Starting today we will no longer provide the option of creating deals, coupons, QR codes and mobile sites as well as removing the ability to create and print collateral for your business.”

Speaking of deals, as Bing Deals no longer exists, Bing also announced the launch of Bing Offers (another deals aggregator).

For Bing Places For Business, users can continue to use the same login information they used for Bing Business Portal. Data will be migrated to the new experience over the next three or four days.

Sound familiar? That’s probably because they launched Bing Deals two years ago, another deals aggregator. Apparently that didn’t work because these days that just redirects to Bing.

Update: A Microsoft spokesperson tells us:

“Microsoft has aligned all deal offerings under the Bing Offers brand – with a much wider selection of local and national deals presented across multiple channels.

In order to better serve our customers, we decided to work on creating a richer experience across devices. As part of the experiential rollout of the new Bing Offers experience, people will begin seeing local deals through Bing and Local Scout on Windows Phone 8. Also, the bing.com/offers site is mobile optimized for customers wanting to discover their deals from any of their favorite mobile devices, such as iPhone or Android.”

So now Bing is at it again with Bing Offers.

“Bing Offers brings together popular deals from across the web in one convenient place, creating a simple way for people to discover and take advantage of great local deals,” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “Whether looking for a new restaurant to try or a much needed spa treatment, consumers can use Bing Offers to search and filter one of the largest collections of local deals from leading providers. Additionally, Bing Offers is optimized for tablets, mobile and PCs, so people can find great deals no matter what device they use.”

The features as described by Bing:

• All your favorite deals in one place: You no longer need to browse through different websites, manage multiple sign-ups or sift-through your inbox. Bing Offers aggregates popular deals across the US to help you discover great deals at the right time and place.
• Quickly find the deals you are looking for:Search for your favorite deals by using any business name, category or keyword. Not looking for a specific deal? Then filter out irrelevant offers by location or category including: food, activities, health & fitness, beauty, travel, retail & services.
• Available on any device: The Bing Offers experience works seamlessly across tablets, mobile devices, and PCs, so you can use access great deals regardless of where you are.

Bing Offers is US-only at this point.