Microsoft today added an interesting new feature to Bing called recipe badges. In short, when you're searching for food, Bing will now indicate which images have a recipe attached so you can cook, bake, or fry what you see.
Bing Image Search now includes a chef's hat badge on the bottom left corner of any image search when a recipe is available. Furthermore, the badge has a number on it to indicate how many websites offer the recipe along with that specific image. Clicking on the badge will show you the list of sites that link to the recipe.
This isn't the first time Microsoft has experiment with badges on Bing Image Search. In April, the search engine gained a "Places to Buy" shopping cart badge (in beta), which, as its name implies, tells you where you can buy a given product.
And just like for the shopping feature, if you have a food website or blog, you can add site tags so your images are surfaced in Bing correctly. You can mark up a webpage so it appears as a "Place to Buy" or a "Recipe."
Microsoft said the recipe badge and the shopping badge will be rolling out worldwide "over the coming weeks." So don't fret if you don't see them yet: You'll soon be able to click on any image of food or a product with a badge.
Despite Google's stranglehold on the search market, Microsoft continues to experiment with ways to differentiate itself with Bing. Still, nobody is going to switch to Bing in order to find recipes while searching for food porn.
While these are not killer features by any means, and search is moving towards tools like Google Now and Cortana, it's still great to see Bing get new functionality that isn't simply a rip from Google.