Enabling Local Listings and Voice Search on Windows Phone 7 in Canada

by Frank Battiston

Windows Phone 7 was released about one month ago, and some of you in Canada may have noticed a lack of local results in both the Bing search and Maps application (also powered by Bing) in Canada. For example, you’ll try searching for “McDonalds” in Toronto (or your local city) and the results will take you to a McDonalds in South Carolina or some other US address (as shown in the image below).  Not quite within walking distance.   You also won’t see a “local” option in the search results.

Bing Search Results in the US

Here’s how you correct this to get local Canadian search and map results:

Enable “Local” results in Bing search and Maps:

  1. Go to the application list
  2. Open “Settings“
  3. Open “Region & Language“
  4. Scroll to bottom and set “Browser & search language” to “English (United States)“

Enable voice searching:

  1. Scroll to top of the “Region & Language” settings, and set the “Display language” to “English”
  2. Set the “Region format” to “English (United States)“
  3. Touch the “Tap here to accept changes and restart your phone” link to restart your phone and have the settings 

The two downsides to this workaround are that all distances will be provided in miles instead of kilometers and News results will source US publishers rather than Canadian ones. A pain worth suffering?  That’s up to you.

Thanks to David Schwartz for the info!

Tagged as: microsoft, Windows Phone 7, WP7

  • Anonymous

    That sucks that we have to give up are Canadian-ness. Any clue as to why they don’t just enable it for Canada?

  • http://mondofrank.com Frank Battiston

    No idea, Colin. In my mind the benefits far outweight the downside, but I get where you’re coming from on the “Canadian-ness” angle.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ries.benjamin Benjamin Ries

    Does “English (UK)” provide these features, while still using kilometres?

  • http://mondofrank.com Frank Battiston

    I tried it quickly but still got miles. Perhaps some combination may result in kilometers, but the news feed still shows the stated locale, so I suppose it would also depend on which geography you’d prefer to see news feeds from.

  • Mike

    I’m a Canadian user and it’s nice to know I can do this, but the search missed out on lots of common things like “Pizza” (couldn’t find any matches in Toronto). I’d rather keep my kilometers and use the Yelp App for restaurant/entertainment that I want to map and then get directions to.

  • http://mondofrank.com Frank Battiston

    Yeah… I noticed similar discrepancies for some common items. Then I found other features enabled that were invaluable (like mapping links enabled in Calendar invitations, so that you can click straight from the address in a Calendar invite or email and go to the map). It will be interesting to see if anything changes in the forthcoming WP7 update.

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