Farecast will become part of Microsoft’s Bing Travel as the company launches Bing.com search engine.

Published: 01 Jun 2009

Farecast will become part of Microsoft’s Bing Travel as the company launches Bing.com search engine.

As per the information available, Bing Internet search engine will still provide search results for any term an online user types into it. But Bing is initially designed to provide a much richer search experience for users looking for information in four categories: shopping, travel, health and local businesses.

Bing’s travel-related searches illustrate how Microsoft will try to one-up its competitors, highlighted wsj.com. The top results from a Bing search for the words “flights from Seattle to San Francisco” include a link that shows a low roundtrip fare of $117. The search page also offers an icon predicting, based on historical trends, what will happen to ticket prices over the next seven days.

The links, powered by Farecast, lead to Bing Travel site from which users can link to airline sites to purchase tickets. A search for the same terms on Google and Yahoo provides links to airline and booking-agency websites, but no ticket prices or predictions about how they will change.