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Using ranking to display entity search results

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Warning

On October 30, 2020, the Bing Search APIs moved from Azure AI services to Bing Search Services. This documentation is provided for reference only. For updated documentation, see the Bing search API documentation. For instructions on creating new Azure resources for Bing search, see Create a Bing Search resource through the Azure Marketplace.

Each entity search response includes a RankingResponse answer that specifies how you must display search results returned by the Bing Entity Search API. The ranking response groups results into pole, mainline, and sidebar content. The pole result is the most important or prominent result and should be displayed first. If you do not display the remaining results in a traditional mainline and sidebar format, you must provide the mainline content higher visibility than the sidebar content.

Within each group, the Items array identifies the order that the content must appear in. Each item provides two ways to identify the result within an answer.

Field Description
answerType and resultIndex answerType identifies the answer (either Entity or Place) and resultIndex identifies a result within that answer (for example, an entity). The index starts at 0.
value value Contains an ID that matches the ID of either an answer or a result within the answer. Either the answer or the results contain the ID but not both.

Using the answerType and resultIndex is a two-step process. First, use answerType to identify the answer that contains the results to display. Then use resultIndex to index into that answer's results to get the result to display. (The answerType value is the name of the field in the SearchResponse object.) If you're supposed to display all the answer's results together, the ranking response item doesn't include the resultIndex field.

Using the ID requires you to match the ranking ID with the ID of an answer or one of its results. If an answer object includes an id field, display all the answer's results together. For example, if the Entities object includes the id field, display all the entities articles together. If the Entities object does not include the id field, then each entity contains an id field and the ranking response mixes the entities with the Places results.

Ranking response example

The following shows an example RankingResponse.

{
  "_type": "SearchResponse",
  "queryContext": {
    "originalQuery": "Jimi Hendrix"
  },
  "entities": { ... },
  "rankingResponse": {
    "sidebar": {
      "items": [
        {
          "answerType": "Entities",
          "resultIndex": 0,
          "value": {
            "id": "https://www.bingapis.com/api/v7/#Entities.0"
          }
        },
        {
          "answerType": "Entities",
          "resultIndex": 1,
          "value": {
            "id": "https://www.bingapis.com/api/v7/#Entities.1"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Based on this ranking response, the sidebar would display the two entity results related to Jimi Hendrix.

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