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Google just announced that it now uses public data from the World Bank to display graphs for queries like "children per woman in brazil" or "internet users in the united states." To do so, Google makes uses of the World Bank's public API. Through this, Google can access 17 World Development Indicators. Google displays this data in interactive graphs that make it easy to compare stats for different countries. The timing of this announcement was likely planned to coincide with the news about Wolfram Alpha's integration with Microsoft's Bing.

Microsoft's Bing now relies on Wolfram Alpha to answer some of its users' questions. This is not a full integration of Wolfram Alpha into Bing, though. Instead, Bing only gets answers for queries about nutrition and math problems from Alpha. A query for "french fries" will still result in the standard search results page with a list of links, but a new compute tab in the left sidebar will open up results from Wolfram Alpha. Bing now also uses Alpha to compute queries related to Body Mass Index (BMI). In addition to this Wolfram Alpha integration, Bing now also features improved hover previews with Facebook integration and full page weather results.

Microsoft just released a major update to Bing Maps. Bing Maps now offers draggable routes that are computed dynamically, a zoom bar, embeddable maps, smarter command parsing and a redesigned interface. The new version of Bing Maps also loads faster. Microsoft now hosts the service in 7 data centers around the world and the Bing team has brought the size of the default Bing Maps home page down from 678kb to 484kb. Just like Google Maps, Bing Maps now also understands more complex queries like "Bellevue, WA to Space Needle."

Microsoft just updated Bing's mobile interface. The new interface features tabs and is optimized for high-resolution touch-screen devices like the iPhone or Microsoft's own Zune HD. The earlier version of Bing Mobile worked reasonably well, but the interface was rather generic. The new version, on the other hand, makes good use of the iPhone's touch screen when searching for movies, for example. Bing now shows a list of movie posters that you can scroll through with a sideways swipe.

Social search was in the news this past week when Google and Bing announced that they would be getting access to the Twitter fire hose. A flurry of subsequent posts speculated on what this "social search" would entail, and some expressed concerns over privacy and spam.

But social search is not something to be afraid of. It's really just an extension of behaviors that we're used to in the real world, brought online, thanks to the advent of real-time social computing.

Google's dominance in the search engine market isn't likely to end anytime soon, but Microsoft's Bing managed to continue its slow but steady growth last month, even though the search engine market in general remained at seasonal lows. According to the latest data from Compete, Bing's market share only grew from 8.7% in August to 8.8% in September, but the total query volume on Bing grew 8.2%. All the other large search engines - except for Ask - registered a decline in total search queries last month.

Web search, real-time search and social search. That's a pretty compelling combination and it's what both Google and Facebook put on the table today in a head-to-head competiton. Google's Marissa Mayer did a short, surprise demo today of an experimental Google feature called Social Search but don't mistake the understated announcement to mean this was a small move. The Web 2.0 Summit today has been jam packed with very big search moves.

Both companies are hoping you'll come to their sites to search for what you're looking for, what people are saying about that topic and what your friends think. Microsoft is very much in the game, too. Here are some things to consider in this search war. It's a new fight - now including the real-time, social web!

Facebook began as a place for college connections, secluded from the prying eyes of the outside world, but today that era is officially over. Major Facebook investor Microsoft announced this afternoon at the Web 2.0 Summit that it has closed deals to bring status messages from both Twitter and Facebook into the search results of Bing.com. Twitter search is live now, Facebook is forthcoming.

Facebook is opening up to a search engine - that's very big news. Only content from accounts marked public will be indexed by Bing, but it's a sea change none the less. Facebook has an explicit, acknowledged agenda to make more people comfortable sharing more information publicly - once they do, that information will be searchable on Bing. This 'aint your big sister's Facebook anymore.

Microsoft has just announced at the Web 2.0 Summit that its search engine Bing now includes Twitter search results. Facebook messages posted by people with public profiles will roll out next, at a date to be determined.

Twitter can bring a new level of up-to-the-minute information to web search, but can Bing add value to Twitter search? We asked three User Experience experts for their opinions about what Bing would need to do in order to succeed in this integration from a UX perspective. They agreed that there was exciting potential here but that the implementation was rudimentary.

After months of slow but steady increases in its market share, Bing's share of the search market in the US and globally fell for the first time in September. According to StatCounter's Global Stats, Bing's share of the search market in the US fell from 9.64% in August to 8.51% last month. Globally, Bing didn't fare much better, as it went from 3.58% to 3.25%. Yahoo's share went from 10.5% in August to only 9.4% in September. The combined share of Bing and Yahoo has now fallen to 17.91%.