How Cortana and Bing work together!!!

[Talderon]

Ok, time for the big guns!!!!

Everyone knows that Cortana is powered by Bing. Did you know that you can add interests and track topics from Bing in Cortana without having to use Cortana to add them?

Here is a quickie on how to do this. You should explore what else you can do, because this will only grow!!

First of all, you will want to perform a Bing Search. Mine was of Demi Lovato (yeah, I am a fan). Looking through the search results, I found something interesting:



If you notice here, there is something new! Clicking on this will add this topic to your interests.

You will now see:



Clicking on this link will allow you to edit this interest to your liking:
(You can get into the settings for everything by clicking on the Settings Gear and going to Interests)



As you can see, you can set where this Syncs and how much information you want.

Clicking on the Interests icon will show you all of your interests:



You can also look in Cortana and see that she has been updated!!!



ENJOY!!!

p.s. this can be used for weather, flights and tons of other things!

 

[SwimSwim]

Noticed this the other day. You also get your subscribed interests and newsfeeds on the Bing homepage now, love it! This also means that Cortana likely uses both desktop Bing Searches + phone Bing searches to get an impression of your personality and interests. So Bings rewards farmers beware: Cortana might get a crazy impression of your personality, haha!

Can't wait to see Cortana on Windows 8 and Xbox, it will be glorious once she's universal!

 

[Talderon]

Noticed this the other day. You also get your subscribed interests and newsfeeds on the Bing homepage now, love it! This also means that Cortana likely uses both desktop Bing Searches + phone Bing searches to get an impression of your personality and interests. So Bings rewards farmers beware: Cortana might get a crazy impression of your personality, haha!

Can't wait to see Cortana on Windows 8 and Xbox, it will be glorious once she's universal!

Cortana is on the way for Xbox One and Windows 8 (no timeline yet, but it is being worked out actively). Also, if you have your devices all sync'd, then yes, she WILL use the shared search information to get to know you better.

 

[ajb1965]

Is there a trick to this? I did a bing search on my pc (IE 11) and did not see any link about tracking the interest. I even searched for Demi Lovato, which I now have to clear my search history

 

[falconrap]

I keep searching for my favorite sports teams, even after turning the interest tracker on, as well as the Sports Headlines, and I don't see the star thing either. Not sure how it comes about, but would like to know.

 

[falconrap]

I did find that you can go into your Bing Settings page and manually add the interests there as a backdoor method. But I would still like to know what is needed to make the above method work as well.

 

[L Kapoor]

Change your region to United States.

 

[Talderon]

I'll look into this today.

 

[ajb1965]

Change your region to United States.

I'm in the good ole' USA, but thank you for the suggestion. This afternoon it just magically started appearing. I guess my Bing account needed to get up to speed . Now if I can just figure out how to get my favorite places to show up in Bing maps on my other devices and why I don't see search as a separate notification option on my Icon I will be set!!

 

[Clint Finch]

Talderon - thanks for all you've done to tell us about Cortana. This, however, didn't work for me at all on my win 8 tab using modern IE. I did a couple of different searches -- Black Stone Cherry and the Denver Broncos and never once saw the option to follow them as you've illustrated. Also, none of my interests set in Cortana showed in Bing. Interestingly, when I hit reset, even though nothing was listed this was still an option, this did clear my interests in Cortana. I've since reset them, logged out and back into Bing in my browser and still no interests listed. Nor do I have the option to follow a subject as you did. It would be nice if this worked but it doesn't for me.

 

[smoledman]

Except Bing only works decently in the US. When will it finally get good for the UK/Australia and Europe?

 

[Talderon]

Talderon - thanks for all you've done to tell us about Cortana. This, however, didn't work for me at all on my win 8 tab using modern IE. I did a couple of different searches -- Black Stone Cherry and the Denver Broncos and never once saw the option to follow them as you've illustrated. Also, none of my interests set in Cortana showed in Bing. Interestingly, when I hit reset, even though nothing was listed this was still an option, this did clear my interests in Cortana. I've since reset them, logged out and back into Bing in my browser and still no interests listed. Nor do I have the option to follow a subject as you did. It would be nice if this worked but it doesn't for me.

If you can, let me have the detailed steps on what you did with screenshots and I will ask around here.

Except Bing only works decently in the US. When will it finally get good for the UK/Australia and Europe?

I really can't comment on timelines for other regions. Sorry. I know that we are working hard to get this rolled out to as many regions as we can as soon as we can.

 

[Clint Finch]

If you can, let me have the detailed steps on what you did with screenshots and I will ask around here.
Thanks. I did figure out how to get Bing to list my Cortana interests; have to run the Get Started link and tutorial first. Once I did that they showed up. Still don't have the option to follow a subject as you demonstrated. Also, I added a new interest in Bing when testing but Cortana doesn't display any news for it. As of now, Cortana will nay fairly consistently show me top news stories and now top science and tech stories but none of my added interests such wp 8.1, windows 8.1, 3 doors down etc....



I really can't comment on timelines for other regions. Sorry. I know that we are working hard to get this rolled out to as many regions as we can as soon as we can.

 

[smoledman]

If you can, let me have the detailed steps on what you did with screenshots and I will ask around here.



I really can't comment on timelines for other regions. Sorry. I know that we are working hard to get this rolled out to as many regions as we can as soon as we can.

It's not enough to just roll out changes to other regions, somehow Bing results have to get better all across the board. Even here in the US, Bing results are ****ty compared to Google. F.e., when I search for local restaurants Google will show me a navigable/filterable strip of them at the top before the search results. Each strip item contains: photo, average rating, price-level and a link to refine the search results on just that restaurant. What does Bing give me? The have a "Bing Local" section at the top which only shows the first 5. These entries include direct links to the menu, average rating, price-level, but no photo. IT's not that Bing results are unusable, it's just that Google goes the extra mile.

 

[anon(5408816)]

It's not enough to just roll out changes to other regions, somehow Bing results have to get better all across the board. Even here in the US, Bing results are ****ty compared to Google. F.e., when I search for local restaurants Google will show me a navigable/filterable strip of them at the top before the search results. Each strip item contains: photo, average rating, price-level and a link to refine the search results on just that restaurant. What does Bing give me? The have a "Bing Local" section at the top which only shows the first 5. These entries include direct links to the menu, average rating, price-level, but no photo. IT's not that Bing results are unusable, it's just that Google goes the extra mile.

Funny because I think that Google's search results and format are crap in comparison to Bing. Admittedly, I don't normally search for restaurants but hey.... Whatever works for you.

 

[Ed Boland]

Subscribed to thread.. I'm going to have to play with this a little more.

 

[Julian Diaz1]

Hi everyone, I'm really exited about the new generation of technology across all Microsoft Services and Softwares.
I'm from Argentina, and it seems to me that the region isn't a barrier. I went to the tools icon on the bing's start page and in the interest area, you have to ''allow' Bing to store all your interest... then if you do a search, the star icon appears.
Regards