Windows 10: Know what businesses are nearby - Bing Maps Local Search API

Brink · Dec 12, 2018

The Bing Maps Locations REST APIs help developers build rich location aware applications. Today we are pleased to announce a new addition to our Locations API – the Bing Maps Local Search API. Bing Local Search API is a simple-to-use REST API that allows you to query for businesses by name, category or free text. The API will support US based business entities and other countries will be added in the future.

Nearby searches are on the rise. Whether it is for a quick after work drinks or planning a holiday trip, customers are always looking for the best nearby place to go to. Developers can use the Bing Maps Local Search API to show the best local businesses or Points of Interest (POI) to their customers. The Bing Maps Local Search API leverages the same comprehensive dataset powering Local Search on bing.com.

The API supports the following scenarios:

Free-form query text

Delight your customers by making it easy for them to find the best local businesses for their needs. Free form text input allows users to type in their queries in a natural and unstructured way. This includes:

Automatically recognizes locations mentioned by the user in their text

Automatic correction of misspelled words

Query examples

‘hotels near Seatac airport’

‘what are the good Thai restaurants that are open right now’

Category search

Developers building apps and services that focus on specific business categories can use the category search feature. The Bing Maps Local Search API supports up to 100 categories, providing enough granularity to enable searching for a specific type of business entity.

Query examples

Search for ‘Parks’ near a real estate location

Search for the generic ‘Shop’ category or the specific types like ‘furniture stores’ or ‘pet shops’

Search within a specified region

When a user’s location is available through the user’s device or other means, developers can use this feature to limit the search to a pre-specified region. The scope of search can be defined using:

A point and search radius centered around that point

A bounding box or view port defined using the top-left and bottom-right coordinates

API reference

The full API reference is available on MSDN at Bing Maps Local Search API reference.

Also, here is a recap of Bing Maps Location REST API to help you build rich location aware applications.

Location Recognition API Given location coordinates, returns the business entities situated at that location Autosuggest API API to help users easily type in local business names or addresses Local Search API Given a query string or category name find local entities
Get started

For more information about the Bing Maps Platform, how to get licensed, and frequently asked questions, visit our website. Please connect with us on the Bing Maps Forum to share your thoughts and let us know what additional features you’d like to see us support.

- Bing Maps Team
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Source: Know what businesses are nearby - Bing Maps Local Search API | Maps Blog

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Brink · Dec 12, 2018

Bing Maps Autosuggest API GA Release

Introducing the Bing Maps Autosuggest API, the newest addition to the Bing Maps REST services. The Autosuggest API is used to return a ranked list of suggested entities based on a user's partial query. The service can return three possible entity types: Addresses (including roads), points of interest, and businesses (currently available in the US only with new markets coming soon).

A maximum of ten (10) autosuggested entities can be returned per request, and the returned entities can be delimited by country and culture. The response can be specified for either JSON or XML format.

The Autosuggest API is designed to help developers populate online query forms such as delivery addresses as well as map search bars. Check out this e-commerce online ordering form to see an example of how the Autosuggest API can be used in JavaScript to populate a list of suggested addresses. Another great example of an Autosuggest API usecase is LinkedIn’s “Your Commute” feature. Moreover, autosuggested entities can easily be displayed using the Bing Maps V8 SDK. For an example using JavaScript, the Bing Maps V8 SDK, and Bootstrap, see the Autosuggest API Browser.

Check out Bing Maps Autosuggest API and let us know what you think. You can connect with the team at the Bing Maps Forums to share feedback and let us know what you would like to see next.

- Bing Maps Team
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Source: Bing Maps Autosuggest API GA Release | Maps Blog

Brink · Dec 12, 2018

Bing Maps Location Recognition API Now Generally Available

Today, we are pleased to announce the general availability release of the Bing Maps Location Recognition API that we previewed in last month’s blog post. Supercharge your applications to provide users with more context about what is nearby. Given a location (latitude, longitude) the Bing Maps Location Recognition API returns a list of entities at the location. The different components of the API response provide a comprehensive description of the location. The API response consists of:

Business entities situated at the location. A wide variety of entity types are supported (e.g. restaurants, hotels, parks, gym, shopping malls and more).

Natural entities at the location (e.g. beaches, island, lakes and 9 other types).

Reverse geocoded address of the input location, with neighborhood and street intersection information where available.

Type of property (e.g. residential, commercial) situated at the location.

For more details on the entities returned please see the Bing Maps Location Recognition Entity Types documentation.

The Bing Maps Location Recognition API is a high-powered reverse geocoding service that is great for use cases where you want to provide users with insightful details about what is at or near a specified lat/long. The Bing Maps Location Recognition API helps answer questions such as what are the businesses and points of interest near a real estate property that I am interested in buying? What is the address associated with a given lat/long? Is it a private residence? What neighborhood am I in?

A good example of the Bing Maps Location Recognition API in use is the trip labeling feature of MileIQ. MileIQ is a leading mileage tracking app using the Location Recognition API to make it easy for users to label the start and end of their trips. The Location Recognition API is providing friendly names of locations visited by a user in their trip, using these suggestions MileIQ users can easily label their trips.

Get Started

We encourage you to try the Bing Maps Location Recognition API using your Bing Maps API key and explore the useful location data it provides for use in your applications.

For more information about the Bing Maps Platform, how to get licensed, and frequently asked questions, visit our website. Please connect with us on the Bing Maps Forum to share your thoughts and let us know what additional features you’d like to see us support.

- Bing Maps Team
Click to expand...

Source: Bing Maps Location Recognition API Now Generally Available | Maps Blog

Brink · Dec 12, 2018

Announcing Enhanced Security for Bing Maps API Keys

The Bing Maps Developer portal shipped a new feature allowing you to restrict access on your Bing Maps API keys to a set of domains that you specify. With this feature customers can define a strict set of Referrer values or IP address ranges that the key will be validated against. Requests originating from your allow list will process normally, while requests from outside of your list will return an access denied response.

Adding domain Security to your API key is completely optional and keys left as-is will continue to function as they do today. The allow list for a key is independent from all of your other keys, enabling you to have distinct rules for each of your keys.

Currently we only support exact referrer name matching, meaning if your browser or header request sends https://www.contoso.com/, please have your referrer name as: https://www.contoso.com/ in the whitelisting definition. We will support short urls in a future release.

Note: Wildcards are not supported when specifying your IP addresses. However you CAN specify an IP range.

To set your Allow list, follow these simple steps:

Sign into the developer portal with your Microsoft Account

Select the My Account → My Keys menu choice to show a list of all of your keys

Click the ‘Enable Security’ link for the key you wish to set restrictions on

For a referrer rule, specify a Rule name and Referrer, then hit the green ‘plus’ button to add it

For an IP Range Rule, click to the IP range tab, then enter a rule name and your desired starting and ending IP address

You can continue to add as many rules as needed for each key

Press the close button when you are finished.

That’s it! Note that it can take up to 30 minutes for these changes to take effect.

If you have questions or feedback for the team, please reach out to our Bing Maps Enterprise Support team at L: bmesupp@microsoft.com.

- Bing Maps Team
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Source: Announcing Enhanced Security for Bing Maps API Keys | Maps Blog

Windows 10: Know what businesses are nearby - Bing Maps Local Search API

Know what businesses are nearby - Bing Maps Local Search API

Know what businesses are nearby - Bing Maps Local Search API

Know what businesses are nearby - Bing Maps Local Search API

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