Microsoft coalesces sentiment analysis into Bing

Microsft's flagship search engine will soon be able to detect, identify, and categorize positive, neutral, and negative sentiment in text and voice-based search queries.

Powered by the artificial intelligence technology known as natural language processing, the integration of a sentiment analysis tool within search is similar to the idea behind featured snippets on Google search.

Miriam Rosenberg, principal program lead for the Bing Relevance and AI team at Microsoft, made the announcement, adding that the search engine will be able to inform users of the varying viewpoints that answer the question entered. The company hopes this will allow users to save time on research while expanding a users knowledge.

Powered by a framework of query transformation co-patented by Rosenberg, the system aims to display search results in accordance with location, movement, and medium of beginning search, with the assumption that voice is primary research mode while a text is secondary research mode.

As with Google's featured snippets, ranking high with Bing's intelligence snippets means advertisers and agencies need to invest in site authority, content relevance to keywords and phrases, a site that is easy to crawl, and a site that follows best practices around user experience.