Azure Search Is Now Generally Available

azure.microsoft.com

7 pointsevboyle3 comments

Honest question: how is this different from using the Bing search and spelling APIs that have been available for years on the Microsoft Marketplace? I use the Bing search APIs in a few of my apps, and have been doing so for years.

Can you index your own data with the Bing search API? This looks like it lets you run the same software that runs Bing with your own data as opposed to only what Bing has crawled. From the link:

> You can now more easily load data from Azure DocumentDB, SQL Server running in Azure VMs, and Azure SQL Database to Azure Search using new indexers. The indexer infrastructure provides a no-code solution that allows you to point Azure Search to your data store where it will ingest data as well as data changes on a scheduled basis.

tkmcc is correct, the other big area that people typically want is the ability to easily tune their search results. For example, you might want to give more weighting (or boost it higher in the search results) to an item if the search text is found product name then if you find it is in the product description. Or perhaps boost a result based on the proximity (geo-location) of the item in relation to the user.

Full disclosure, I am a Program Manager on the Azure Search team.

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