• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 30, 2019

Bing has released three location APIs -- Bing Maps Location Recognition, Bing Maps Local Search API and Bing Maps Local Insights API. These APIs aim to support location services for enterprise companies, enabling businesses to be more specific when serving locations in search results.

For example, Location Recognition will translate a latitude and longitude coordinate into easily accessible information such as points of interest, business identities, and landmarks.

"What are the businesses and points of interest near a real estate property that I am interested in buying?" is an example of one question the data can answer through a search, the Bing Maps team explains in a blog post.

The Local Search API can help to identify which businesses are nearby when doing an area-based search by business name or category.

The Local Insights API can answer more complex questions that involve the distance between places, such as how long it would take to walk, drive or take public transit from one location to another. It provides the time it takes, as well as the distance between locations.

This API tells the searcher about which nearby restaurants, bars, movie theaters, parks or other kinds of places are nearby and also takes into consideration the predicted traffic at a specific time of day.

The Local Search API and the Local Insights API are available in the United States, with plans to make them broadly available in the future.