{"id":15871,"date":"2018-05-16T14:33:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T21:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devwww.3cloudsolutions.com\/post\/cognitive-services-showcase-api-search-tools-2\/"},"modified":"2024-01-03T14:32:41","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T22:32:41","slug":"cognitive-services-showcase-api-search-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/resources\/cognitive-services-showcase-api-search-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"Cognitive Services Showcase:\u00a0 API\u00a0Search Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the next few weeks, we will be exploring the capabilities of Microsoft\u2019s <\/span>Cognitive Services<\/a>. These application programming interface (API) sets empower users with intelligent algorithms that see, hear, speak, understand, and interpret data when applied to apps, websites, and bots.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Cognitive<\/span><\/p>\n

For our first exploration of Microsoft\u2019s Cognitive Services APIs, we will be looking into the Search category. Adding the\u00a0Bing Search API to your apps will give you the ability to comb through billions of web pages, images, videos, and news with a single API call.\u00a0I’ll also show how easy it is to create your own search engine using the Custom Search API<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

All About Search<\/h2>\n

When we need to search for something on the web such as a new recipe for chocolate cake or maybe some helpful articles related to some research we’re doing, we probably use a search engine like Google or Bing to help us navigate to the content for which we’re looking. However, given the billions of pages online, and the fact that a small percentage of popular pages typically \u00a0overshadow the rest of the web, it may be desirable to better control the results a search engine returns. This is where the Search APIs can come in handy. Using a Cognitive Services Search API will allow you to define a slice of the web from which to return results.<\/p>\n

As of today, Microsoft has seven search APIs. These APIs can handle many tasks \u2013 from searching for images and video, to browsing the news, to intelligently autosuggesting options for searches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"search-autosuggest\"<\/td>\nBing Autosuggest API<\/a><\/span><\/td>\nGive your app intelligent autosuggest options for searches<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"search-entitysearch\"<\/td>\nBing Entity Search API<\/a><\/span><\/td>\nEnrich your experiences by identifying and augmenting entity information from the web<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"search-videosearch\"<\/td>\nBing Video Search API<\/a><\/span><\/td>\nSearch for videos and get comprehensive results<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"search-newssearch\"<\/td>\nBing News Search API<\/a><\/span><\/td>\nSearch for news and get comprehensive results<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"search-customsearch\"<\/td>\nBing Custom Search API<\/a><\/span><\/td>\nAn easy-to-use, ad-free, commercial-grade search tool that lets you deliver the results you want<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"search-websearch\"<\/td>\nBing Web Search API<\/a><\/span><\/td>\nGet enhanced search details from billions of web documents<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"search-imagesearch\"<\/td>\nBing Image Search API<\/a><\/span><\/td>\nSearch for images and get comprehensive results<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

To try any of these Search Cognitive Services for yourself, get a free trial API key here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bing Custom Search API<\/h2>\n

\"customize-your-search\"<\/p>\n

One of the most useful Search APIs, in my opinion, is the Bing Custom Search. This API allows you to quickly and reliably define the slices of the web from which you want results. This API is very flexible and easy to use. Simply change the parameters of the sites you want and don’t want and explore site suggestions to intelligently expand the scope of your search domain.<\/p>\n

Here at BlueGranite, we have a very active blog written by many of our esteemed consultants. Did you know that many of us have personal blogs, too?<\/p>\n

To demo this API, I have created my own custom search engine to pull search results from everyone’s personal blogs as well as the main BlueGranite blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To begin, navigate to customsearch.ai<\/a>\u00a0and click Get Started<\/i><\/strong>. On the next page, you’ll need to sign in with your Microsoft\/Office 365 credentials.<\/p>\n

\"Bing<\/p>\n

Next, you will need to agree to the terms and conditions and click Agree<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Bing<\/p>\n

There are only a couple of steps that you’ll need to go through to create your customized search. Click Create new instance<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0and give your new custom search a name.<\/p>\n

\"Custom\"Create<\/p>\n

Next, you’ll begin typing in the URLs for the sites you want to search. For my custom search instance, I am including all the URLs for each BlueGranite employee’s personal site. Note that you can adjust the rankings of each active site and even block particular sites from which you don’t want search results.<\/p>\n

\"Search<\/p>\n

On the next few tabs, the site will give you the API endpoint information if you need to embed these results in your own app. The site also generates code to easily embed the custom search into your own web page.<\/p>\n

Try my custom search for yourself:<\/span><\/h5>\n