Cognitive Services – Bing Local Business Search now available in public preview

We are excited to share that Bing Local Business Search API on Cognitive Services is now available in public preview. Bing Local Business Search API enables users to easily find local business information within your applications, given an area of interest. The public preview of Bing Local Business Search API enables scenarios such as calling, navigation, and mapping using contact details, latitude/longitude, and other entity metadata. This metadata comes from hundreds of categories including professionals and services, retail, healthcare, food and drink, and more. Additionally, user queries can be pertaining to a single entity, such as “Microsoft City Center Plaza Bellevue”, a collection of results like “Microsoft offices in Redmond, WA”, and category queries such as “Italian Restaurant” are also supported. Alternatively, users can use one of our predefined categories to query our API.

Below is an example of a JSON response. Each result item contains a name, full address, phone number, website, business category, and latitude/longitude. Using these results, you can build engaging user scenarios in your applications. For instance, you could enable users to find and contact a local business. Another example is to enable navigation to the place of interest or plotting results on Bing Maps. An example from Bing.com for the “City Center Plaza Microsoft” query is shown below.

Get more details about the Bing Local Business Search API offering by reading, “API Announcement: Local Business Search Public Preview” on the Bing Developer Blog.

For questions please reach out to us via Stack Overflow and Azure Support. We would also love to hear your feedback.

Source: Azure Blog Feed