Microsoft on Thursday expanded the partnership between its Bing search engine and Facebook by adding Facebook "likes" to any URL returned by its search engine in the U.S.
As a result, friends' "likes" will be integrated into Bing search results. If you search for hotels in Napa, for instance, you'll see the regular list of search results, but you might also see your friends' Facebook photos under certain returns (below) with a note that says they have liked this particular hotel on Facebook.
"If your friends have publicly liked or shared any of the algorithmic search results shown on Bing, we will now surface them right below the result," the Bing team wrote in a blog post.
Thursday's announcement expands upon an October partnership between Facebook and Bing that promoted links that friends "liked" or shared via Facebook.
Microsoft said the effort is "part of a longer journey" that will incorporate social interactions into search.
"This is the first time in human history that people are leaving social traces that machines can read and learn from, and present enhanced online experiences based on those traces," the company said. "As people spend more time online and integrate their offline and online worlds, they will want their friends' social activity and their social data to help them in making better decisions. Integrating with Twitter data 16 months ago was one step, and exploring Facebook's rich streams is another."
The number of "liked results" you see on Bing naturally depends on the number of friends you have on Facebook and how often those friends "like" things.
Last week, Bing also released an updated version of its toolbar. The search engine also recently got location-based and more personalized search results.
