Someone told me that Siri on my new iPhone 6 Plus actually uses Bing for its search results? Not good. How can I change Siri to use Google for search results?
Ah, the shiny new iPhone 6 Plus tablet, um, smartphone, and everyone’s favorite gal Siri to chat with. You’re right, though, when Apple switched from iOS 6 to iOS 7 the company quietly changed the default search engine for both Siri and the Safari Web browser from Google to Bing. Bing? Yeah, one imagines that there was a bit of a financial transaction behind the scenes, somehow.
As to whether Bing is better or worse than Google, I can only say that most people seem to prefer Google, though it’s always dangerous to write off anyone on the Redmond team because they might not be trendy or in the public zeitgeist at this moment. Buuuuttt…. having said that, I use Google for all my searches and that’s what I want my pal Siri to use too.
You’d think that perhaps you can just ask Siri what search engine she uses, but that didn’t work out too well for me:
Alright, try #2.
I asked “what search engine are you using” and the results were even more inexplicable:
Not sure what thermal efficiency is involved here, but, yeah, okay. 0.25.
I’m not one to give up that quickly, so another stab at it. This time I’ll just tell Siri to change her default search engine:
Nope, still no joy, but now SLN2227 shows up as yet another cryptic data item.
Are there aliens in my phone?
At least you can still do searches and specify what search engine you want as part of the request:
Okay, enough fun with Siri. Sorry, honey, but we need to actually change this setting!
To do so, go into Settings, then swipe down to find Safari:
See it there at the bottom?
Tap on “Safari”…
There are a number of interesting things you can tweak, but focus on the first one: “Search Engine”.
You can see that my default is indeed Bing. Not so much. Let’s instead tap on the “Search Engine” field…
DuckDuckGo? No idea what that one’s about, but a quick tap on “Google” and I’m done.
Not that Siri can tell me she’s now using Google. Silly girl. 🙂
As others state this is not a fix. On a side not, using an iPad 4 , Siri has her own options and no “default” engine option! So no coffee today Dave, better luck next time but I appreciate people like you who at least TRY to help! Siri can’t either so don’t beat yourself up!
switching safari’s default search engine (which also switches to b i n g by itself for some reason) does not affect Siri’s search engine selection. i still cannot find a setting to change that. you can ask Siri to “Google” something though.
You are incorrect sir. That only changes the search in Safari. Not Siri
In those settings it already shows my default as Google, but Siri is still using bing as default 🙁
Hi, Dave. I’m surprised that you do not know about Duck Duck Go. It’s a search engine that does NOT track or cookie our searches. I have written about it, pointing seniors to it – http://technologyforseniorsmadeeasy.com/?p=2705
I love receiving your emails (at a different email address) and have pointed others to this site and on Facebook to your Page. Thank you for all that you are doing