“Hitting the stores or the all-you-can-eat buffet”? Because apparently Bing can help you get there more easily.

In anticipation of the number of additional shopping searches during the upcoming festive season, Bing have rolled a new feature call Fact Answers into their search results which displays factual information about shops and businesses in relation to your search queries.

This information is in addition to the local business results, appears at the very top of the page, and includes details such as:

• Phone number
• Address
• Opening hours
• Directions from your current location

Here’s an example of a phone number search for a restaurant:

This new search feature has been set-up to work in the U.S., U.K., and in France, and it looks pretty good (apart from the large advert that’s appearing above the directions from Fact Answers.

However, an attempt at searching for the phone number so that I can call up to book tickets proves to be more of a challenge – although it does appear in the business listings:

So perhaps there is still some ironing out left to do for Bing’s “Fact Answers” software – Wimbledon Theatre is a popular attraction, and Bing users in the UK would certainly benefit by having the phone number appear in Bing Fact Answers.

Nevertheless, with a little development Fact Answers could certainly become very useful, although being quite a few steps behind Google, which already has this feature (and it seems to work flawlessly):

Unfortunately this is another example of Google trumping Bing – but then who’s keeping count right?