I know you’re a big fan of the Googleplex and everything the company does, Dave, but my boss and I both prefer Bing as our search engine. Thing of it is, I want to be able to construct some fairly sophisticated searches where I exclude certain domains, search for phrases not words, etc. Is it possible on Bing to do advanced searches?
Bah, you’ve nailed me. I have to admit that I am an unabashed fan of Google and everything the company does, from using the Chrome browser to Gmail, Google Docs to Gdrive. Sheesh. I should have stock. Oh, I do. Like 7 shares. 🙂
One of the reasons for that is because Google is so tightly integrated into so many of the other devices I use every day, particularly my iPhone. Searches default to Google, maps default to Google Maps, etc. One ring, um, company, to rule them all!
Then again, that sounds rather like Microsoft’s position in the industry fifteen years ago, so I’m under no delusion that it’s a sustainable position for Google. So, in retrospect, it’s smart to get comfortable with Microsoft Bing so I know the alternatives out there. Actually, to be candid, I use Bing and Bing Maps too. Both are very slick.
Okay, enough of the rationalization. You like Bing? We’re good.
Turns out that there is quite a sophisticated search capability in Bing, but it’s a bit tricky to find it because of a rather peculiar user interface decision they made. Let me show you.
Here’s the search box from the home page at www.bing.com:
Enter a search term and it’ll suggest some possibilities. I’m entering “noir”:
Notice at the bottom where it says “Manage search history”? Let’s do a search to get to a search results page and type in the exact same word to see the critical difference in the suggested terms window:
See it on the bottom? Advanced search. That’s what you want to click on, and why it doesn’t show up on the suggestion window on the main search page is baffling to me. Why differentiate?
Anyway, click on it and you’re now in the very cleanly designed advanced search area. Check out what you can do:
A click on “All of these terms” and you’ll see there are a number of options for your advanced Bing search:
But wait! There’s more!
Click on “Site/Domain” and you can indeed constrain searches by a specific domain or top-level domain (like “.edu” or “.mil”), either inclusively or exclusively:
While we’re at it, click on “Country/Region”:
Not so much looking in Albania, but if you’re seeking travel information for Brasilia, for example, constraining search results to Brazil could be a smart move, especially when coupled with the last tab: “Language”:
In sum, you really can make your searches on Bing quite sophisticated and without having to learn any obscure or confusing special meta-language notation. It’s juts too bad that they don’t have the advanced search link accessible from the home page too. But that’s a story for another blog post.
Well, there’s this too: http://help.bing.microsoft.com/#apex/18/en-us/10002/0
Hopefully helpful!
Hi Dave please can you delete all the above 2012 answers you have put, as, there now (2018) is no advanced search on Bing anymore at all anywhere – none of the above works. I have looked on the latest Bing site none of your answers work and I have searched Myself all the current 2018 Bing features and it doesn’t seem to appear on any of those either, if you can let us know if there is any new way to find it that would be great, very many thanks.
Are you sure that these don’t still work, even if there’s not a separate page for the advanced search? http://help.bing.microsoft.com/#apex/18/en-us/10002/0
I can’t find it either. I found the place to delete search history like you showed, but there’s no “advanced search” next to it. I was trying to use Boolean terms on Bing and it just doesn’t. Search as to how to do that brought me to you, but your explanation doesn’t work at this time.
Dave, FANTASTIC! It seems to me that your previously correct information has been systematically wiped from existence. What I would like to know now is, how did you find this real live link to helpful information? Thanks for your help.
This seems to have been written in or before 2012. [Manage Search History] no longer appears there ( using Chrome at least) and [Advanced Search] does not seem to appear anywhere certainly not in the pull down menu’s choice of [Search History]
I’ve came across Advangle (http://advangle.com) web-service recently. This is a nice tool which help to create quite sophisticated queries for Google and Bing search engines.
well that was interesting. I do not think I would have had the patience to figure out where they put the advanced search features.
Wouldn’t it better for MS if they put it where it was a little more obvious. Or, have they given up trying to compete with Google?