What's new in Microsoft Web IQ

All notable changes of Microsoft Web IQ are recorded here.

2026-10-16 - Passages by default, new pricing, Azure portal deployment

Changed

  • Content formats - Web Search and News Search return the parts of each page most relevant to the query (contentFormat = passage, up to 3000 characters) by default. See Full-page content for the other formats.
  • Pricing - New prices take effect. See Pricing.

Added

2026-10-01 - Auto beta release

Added

  • Auto (Beta) - Retrieve typed evidence with result-scoped citations through the Auto REST API.

2026-09-29 - Risk level on Web Search responses

Added

  • riskLevel field - The riskLevel field on Web Search responses is now generally available. It reports the safety risk level assessed for the query. Possible values: low, moderate, high, veryHigh. See the Web Search API reference for details.

2026-08-26 — Query Freshness on Web Results

Added

  • querySignals.freshness field — Web search responses now indicate whether fresh documents should be prioritized for the query.

2026-08-18 — Language Field on News Results

Added

  • language field — the per-result language field on News search responses is now generally available. It reports the language of the news article using an ISO 639-1 language code. See the News Search API Reference for details.

2026-08-04 — News and Images Search are now Generally Available

Changed

2026-07-23 — Safe Search on Web Search and Crawled Date on News Results

Added

  • safeSearch parameter — new request parameter on Web search that controls how much sensitive content is filtered from results. Values: strict (default) or off. See the Web Search API Reference for details.
  • crawledAt field — the per-result crawledAt field on News search responses is now generally available. It reports the last crawled date of the news article in ISO8601 format. See the News Search API Reference for details.

2026-07-10 — Content Tier on Web Results

Added

  • contentTier field — new per-result contentTier field on Web search responses, describing the commercial access characteristics of the content source. Possible values: standard, entitled, premium. See the Web Search API Reference for details.

2026-07-06 — Enabled Click Instrumentation

Added

  • Click instrumentation fields — new top-level instrumentationClickBase and instrumentationCitationBase fields plus per-result clickUrl / instrumentationSuffix fields on Web, News, Videos, and Images responses. Fields are returned only when click instrumentation is enabled for the calling profile. See the Instrumentation guide for setup instructions.

2026-06-02 — First Public Release

Added

  • Web Search API — search the web with advanced ranking and filtering capabilities.
  • Videos Search API — discover video content from multiple sources.
  • Browse API — fetch and parse web page content for grounding.
  • News Search API (Beta) — access real-time news from trusted sources.
  • Images Search API (Beta) — find relevant images across the web.
  • MCP Server — Model Context Protocol integration for AI agents.
  • SDKs — official Python and TypeScript SDKs for the Microsoft Web IQ API.

Visit our Quick Start guide to begin using the API, or explore the API Reference for detailed endpoint documentation.

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