Microsoft confirmed Wednesday a partnership with computational knowledge engine WolframAlpha that incorporates health and nutrition-related data into Bing search results. It's a deal the two companies have been working to seal for the better part of the year.

The inability to search and find information about health-related topics led Microsoft to build the feature into Bing. Microsoft found through internal research that 43% of people say they use a search engine for health research.

Nutritional information is the third-most searched-on health topic, according to Stefan Weitz, director at Microsoft Bing. So, the integration of WolframAlpha on Bing now allows people to search for specific food, such as Spinach, to quickly find nutritional guidance. People who search the site also get a nutrition facts label at the bottom of the results page summarizing information on that food item.

Do a search for "pumpkin" and discover that prepared pumpkin has 149 mg of fat calories, 6 carbohydrates, and 774 mg of protein. The average serving size is 85 grams. For those watching their caloric intake, especially during the holidays, a tool available on Bing provides an index to measure body mass. WolframAlpha's body mass index allows people to search on "bmi," enter height and weight, and click on Calculate to get a detailed Body Mass Index analysis.

But the search engine not only gives nutritional guidance, it also provides insight into hospitals and doctors. Queries for searches on keywords, such as Stanford Hospital, will pull information from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services's Web site. That data comes from a page allowing people to rank the quality of care from hospitals and doctors.

"We're bringing the information into Bing and summarizing it for consumers," Weitz says. "We asked ourselves what we can do with all the computational resources at our disposal -- what can we do that humans can't. So, we took the power, applied it to the dataset and brought it back into the Bing search query."

It's part of Bing's focus to extract "knowledge" from a massive wealth of information stored in databases connected to the Internet. The Bing search engine team has been working to bring "knowledge" higher up into the results. In the past, when someone did a search for "Chicago" or "Los Angeles," the site would fire off an answer, but now for cities, products and artists the answer gets augmented with more data from around the Web.

Not only does the search result for "Chicago" return the official link in the query, but also weather, events and attractions. "People say give me answers and knowledge, but don't give me more links," Weitz says. "They want more than links in the search engine results."

So Bing has begun to take search a step further to find the intent of the person searching on the keywords before serving up the results. Initially, a select group will have access to the health and nutrition data from Wolfram Alpha, along with other features. The full rollout should take several weeks.

Other features are also on the way. Before 2009 ends, Microsoft will integrate full-page weather and event results, and City Slideshows features. Updates to existing features include an improved Bing Shopping experience and the next generation of Hover Preview, which lets people view a snapshot of a Web sites or search within that site before clicking through.

Microsoft's Bing search engine jumped 7% in searches during October, sequentially, taking a small bite of market share from Google and Yahoo, according to Experian Hitwise. People used Bing for 9.6% of Web searches, the data firm says.

Ask.com also made gains in October. Searches rose 2%, accounting for just 2.6% of all searches in the month, according to the research firm. Google and Yahoo lost 1% of search market share, 70.60% and 16.14, respectively.

Aside from the WolframAlpha engine, Microsoft recently rolled out upgrades to Bing Video, and direct integration with Facebook and Twitter. Bing Video now displays the hottest viral clips, music videos, snips from TV shows, and movie trailers.

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