Microsoft adds Wolfram Alpha to Bing

Microsoft has announced a deal that will bring the Wolfram Alpha search tool to its Bing search service.

The company said that the deal will allow users to take advantage of the Wolfram Alpha algorithms and search tools within Bing queries.

The initial partnership, which is expected to bear fruit within a few days, will focus on providing nutritional information to users as well as certain mathematical tools. When users search for foods or recipes, the engine will display a small tab containing nutritional information.

Along with increasing traffic to the Bing service, Microsoft hopes that the features will allow users to better monitor their diet and exercise plans.

"This notion of creating and presenting computational knowledge in search results is one of the more exciting things going on in search (and beyond) today, and the team at Bing is incredibly fired up to bring some of this amazing work to our customers," programme managers Tracey Yao and Pedro Silva said in a blog posting.

The Wolfram Alpha partnership is one of several campaigns Microsoft has embarked on to drum up traffic for Bing. Other recent additions include visual search results and the ability to search within a user's Hotmail archives.