Bing just got a lot better at searching Twitter.
Microsoft added a host of new Tweet-discovery features to its search engine Monday, making it easier for users to find the tweets and accounts that interest them most.
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You can now search Bing by hashtag, look up specific Twitter handles or search for tweets related to a specific celebrity. In some cases, Bing will also recommend relevant search terms as you type. When searching for a hashtag, for example, the search engine will suggest popular hashtags as soon as you enter the "#" symbol.
Bing also makes it much easier to look up celebrity accounts and find tweets about celebs. When you start a search with the "@" symbol, Bing suggests accounts as you type. If you aren't sure about a suggestion, you can hover over an account name to see a preview that displays account information and recent tweets. The search engine will also indicate when an account is verified to make it easier to find the right one.
Bing surfaces tweets based on a variety of factors, including popularity and the account status of the person who tweeted. "We look at a number of signals including tweet quality, retweet count, freshness of tweet, user-profile info and verified status, among others," the company wrote in a blog post. "Placing these signals in our model, we serve what we hope are top quality tweets."
The new features, the result of an existing partnership between Bing and Twitter, are available now.
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