Noel Guerra
BING SEARCH OPERATORS CHEAT SHEET: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE
Last Updated on 19th October 2022 by Paul
If Bing is your go-to search engine, you should know there are special commands you can add to your searches to generate way more accurate results: search operators.
The following is a definitive list that includes every Bing search operator currently in use, clear instruction on what each one does and an explanation about how to use them all.
Additionally I’ll show you some practical examples that combine search operators to give you ultra-powerful results from Bing searches!Table of Contents
- What Are Search Operators?
- Search Operators & Options
- Bing Advanced Search Options
WHAT ARE SEARCH OPERATORS?
If you’ve never heard of search operators before and don’t know what they are, I’ve written a detailed overview here: What are Search Operators? If you’re pressed for time though, I’ll summarize below.
When you use a search engine to make a search, you often get millions of results. Most of them pretty accurately match what you’re looking for right?
However, if you’re looking for something very specific, broad searches create a lot of results that you have to sift through to find a result that specifically answers your needs.
In cases like these, search operators filter out the noise to return laser-targeted results.
So what are they?
Search operators are very powerful commands you add to your queries to tell a search engine to return a very specific result set. So instead of seeing millions of results for your search, you only see results that match precisely what you’re looking for.
There are many of them and they can be combined together to make your searches incredibly powerful.
BING SEARCH OPERATORS & OPTIONS
OPERATORS
The syntax for all operators must be precise. All operators are followed by a colon. There are no spaces immediately before or after the colon.
CONTAINS:
The contains: operator focuses Bing results on pages that include links to certain filetypes.
Example: search engine optimization contains:pdf
DEFINE:
Using define: in a Bing search delivers an instant answer for the term you pair it with. It’s effectively a way to request a definition of a word or phrase, as a type of dictionary function. This is how to use it:
Example: define:zeitgeist
DOMAIN:
domain: limits search results to the specified domain.
Example: domain:sidegains.com seo:
FEED:
feed: returns the URLs for RSS or Atom feeds relating to the search term you request.
Example: feed:link building
FILETYPE:
The filetype: operator only returns pages having a specified file type.
Example: sky diving filetype:pdf
IMAGESIZE:
imagesize: calls results directly from Bing Images. To use it you provide a search term combined with the imagesize: operator and one of the following options:
| imagesize: Option | Function |
| small | Width less than 200 pixels and height less than 200 pixels. |
| medium | Width between 200 pixels and 500 pixels. Height between 200 pixels and 500 pixels. |
| large | Width greater than 200 pixels. Height greater than 200 pixels. |
Example: seo imagesize:large
INANCHOR:
inanchor: lists all pages that include the term that follows it in the anchor text of any links on the indexed page.
Example: inanchor:sky diving
The word order of the inanchor: text is respected. So in this example, Bing is looking for pages that contain the anchor text “sky” followed by “diving”.
INBODY:
The inbody: operator lists all pages indexed in Bing that contain the proceeding term within metadata of the actual page content.
Example: inbody:weather
INSTREAMSET:
instreamset: looks to see if a specific string appears in one or more page properties. It’s similar to intitle:, inbody:, and inanchor:, albeit more general. However, you can tell it specifically to look at one or all page properties by placing them in parethesis.
Example: instreamset:(title url):soccer
Other examples might be:
- instreamset:(body):soccer
- instreamset:(anchor):soccer
- instreamset:(url):soccer
- instreamset:(title):soccer
You can also use combinations of any of the above with instreamset: if you need more flexibility than intitle:, inbody:, and inanchor: provide.
Example: instreamset:(body url title):soccer
INTITLE:
Using the intitle: operator lists all indexed pages that contain the term following it in their metadata title.
So for example, using intitle:seo in Bing returns all sites having the term “seo” in their meta title:
Example: intitle:seo
IP:
Searching Bing with the ip: operator combined with a keyword returns results from indexed pages hosted at the IP address you pass. address
Example: ip:35.186.243.87 soccer
You’ll notice from the image that this pulls all indexed pages hosted at the specified IP relating to the search term “soccer”. The search has pulled results from different domains that are hosted on the same server.
LANGUAGE:
The language: operator is useful for keyword searches where you require results in a specific language.
Example: futbol language:es
Reference: Bing Language Codes
SITE:
site: combined with a domain name shows you all the pages from a specific domain indexed in Bing. Below is a result using it with sidegains.com.
Example: site:sidegains.com
The site: operator only returns subdomain results up to two levels deep. This means it won’t return results from one.example.of.sidegains.com but will return results them one.example.sidegains.com.
URL:
url: combined with a domain name or a URL shows you whether or not a specific domain or URL is indexed in Bing. Here’s a result using it with sidegains.com.
Example: url:sidegains.com
BING ADVANCED SEARCH OPTIONS
Search options help to further refine your search results. The following option symbols streamline results to help you find waht you’re looking for more quickly.
| Symbol | Example | Effect |
| ” “ | “search engine optimization” | Returns pages indexed in Bing that exactly match your query. your query must be placed between the quotes. |
| + | soccer +fifa | Returns pages containing all search terms preceded by the + symbol. |
| () | (soccer clubs california) | Returns indexed pages containing a group of words. |
| AND or & | soccer AND teams | Returns all indexed pages containing the keyword or keyword phrases. |
| NOT or – | soccer -fifa | Returns all pages that do not contain the search terms you specify. |
| OR or | | kindle OR ipad | Returns all pages containing either of the search terms or phrases you specify. |
Bing Advanced Search Options
You must capitalize the NOT and OR options when you use them or Bing will ignore them.
Franklin, Paul (February 2023) BING SEARCH OPERATORS CHEAT SHEET: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE. Sidegains. https://www.sidegains.com/search-engines/bing-search-operators-cheat-sheet/
Indexed Pages Differences Between Google & Bing
The most glaring difference between the two search engines is their indexing of our old domain pages. While Google still retains over 2,000 URLs from Marketing Land and MarTech Today, there are only 143 of these URLs left in Bing’s index. Marketing Land URLs on Bing. MarTech Today URLs on Bing.
A discrepancy between Google and Bing’s indexing
Of the two search engines, it seems Bing is doing a better job of crawling old URLs and adjusting its index accordingly. This makes sense — there are fewer pages indexed on Bing, so the search engine has less to clean up.
But why is Google holding on to so many of these old URLs? One possible explanation is that it simply hasn’t crawled all of the old URLs yet. This would mean it hasn’t found the 301 redirects we put in place, believing the old sites are still live.
This seems unlikely, however, as we migrated the site almost a year ago. Google has had plenty of time to crawl our pages. Yet, we’re still open to this possibility.
Another explanation could be that there’s a structural issue on the MarTech site that is somehow telling Google the old domains are still live. We’re conducting some deep technical audits at the moment to determine if this is true. Until we know more, we’re going to continue to create good content and do all we can to help it rank higher than the less relevant pages.
Have you noticed discrepancies in indexing between Google and Bing? How are you addressing the issue?
Please read the Mar case study – Indexing: A tale of two search engines (searchengineland.com)
(February 2023) Website https://searchengineland.com/indexing-a-tale-of-two-search-engines-383465#:~:text=Indexed%20pages.,-Bing%20has%20indexed&text=The%20most%20glaring%20difference%20between,MarTech%20Today%20URLs%20on%20Bing.
More Differences
- Differences Between Bing and Google
- Bing vs Google: Differences in Ranking Factors
- Technical SEO
- Bing Examines Metadata More Closely
- Bing Prefers Official Domain Types
- Off-Page SEO
- Bing Pays Attention to Social Signals
- Multimedia Content
- Google’s Mobile-First Indexing
- Bing vs Google: Beyond Ranking Factors
- Google Has Additional SERP Features
- Bing Is More Visually Immersive
- Local Search and User Proximity
- Bing and Google Maps Side by Side
- Bing Impresses with Image and Visual Search
- Voice Search – Bing and Google Comparison
- Bing Offers No Equivalent to Google Books and Scholarly Articles
- Google Got Ahead of the Game With Flights and Finance
- Bing vs Google: Paid Advertising
- A Brief History of Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising
- Differences Between Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising
| Ranking Factor | Bing | |
| Mobile-First Indexing | ❌ | ✅ |
| Site speed | ✅ | ✅ |
| Core Web Vitals | ❌ | ✅ |
| Keywords in meta descriptions | ✅ | ❌ |
| Weighting on keywords in anchor text? | More so | Less so |
| Prefers .gov or .edu domains? | ✅ | ❌ |
| Backlinks | Less so | More so |
| Social media signals | ✅ | ❌ |
Comparing Google vs. Microsoft Bing’s Functionality
From a search functionality perspective, the two search engines are similar, but Google offers more core features:
| Feature | Microsoft Bing | |
| Text Search | Yes | Yes |
| Video Search | Yes | Yes |
| Image Search | Yes | Yes |
| Maps | Yes | Yes |
| News | Yes | Yes |
| Shopping | Yes | Yes |
| Books | Yes | No |
| Flights | Yes | No |
| Finance | Yes | No |
| Scholarly Literature | Yes | No |
How Google & Microsoft Bing Differ in Size of Index and Crawling
Google says:
“The Google Search index contains hundreds of billions of webpages and is well over 100,000,000 gigabytes in size.”
Even so, not even Google can crawl the entire web. That is just not going to happen.
This is why using structured data is so important. It provides a data feed about your content so Google can understand it better, which can help you qualify for rich results and get more clicks and impressions.
Microsoft Bing hasn’t released similar figures. However, this search engine index size estimating website puts the Microsoft Bing index at somewhere between 8 to 14 billion web pages.
The two engines have shared a little about their approaches to web indexing.
Microsoft Bing says:
“Bingbot uses an algorithm to determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site. The goal is to minimize bingbot crawl footprint on your web sites while ensuring that the freshest content is available.”
Around the same time the above statement was made, John Mueller from Google said:
“I think the hard part here is that we don’t crawl URLs with the same frequency all the time. So some URLs we will crawl daily. Some URLs maybe weekly. Other URLs every couple of months, maybe even every once half year or so. So this is something that we try to find the right balance for, so that we don’t overload your server.”
Google has a mobile-first index, while Microsoft Bing takes a different stance and does not have plans to apply a mobile-first indexing policy.
Instead, Microsoft Bing maintains a single index that is optimized for both desktop and mobile, so it is important to make sure your site experience is optimized, loads quickly, and gives users what they need.
Google has evolved into more than just a search engine with products like Gmail, Maps, Chrome OS, Android OS, YouTube, and more.
Microsoft Bing also offers email via Outlook, as well as other services like Office Online or OneDrive.
Unlike Google, however, it does not have its own operating system. Instead, it uses Windows Phone 8 or iOS on Apple devices.
Optimizing for Google Search vs. Microsoft Bing
Google is primarily concerned with E.A.T: Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
Google Searches are powered by machine-based algorithms that take into account users’ previous search history and location when generating results.
This means that if a particular user wants to find something specific on Google, it will be much easier than on Microsoft Bing because Google has a more complete picture of who that person is before they type anything in the browser.
Google has always been a link-orientated search engine in which the quality of links still matters instead of quantity. Links are not as important on Microsoft Bing.
In my opinion, Microsoft Bing has always been focused on on-page optimization. It puts more weight on content that is well optimized, or that includes important on-page elements like titles, descriptions, URLs, and content.
Unlike Google, Microsoft Bing states in its webmaster guidelines that it incorporates social signals into its algorithm. That means you should also focus on Twitter and Facebook – including building good quality content on your site and social platforms – if you want to rank highly in Microsoft Bing.
Content is extremely important for both search engines. Always focus on high-quality content that satisfies the user’s informational need. By creating useful and relevant content, users will naturally love it and link to it.
So, for example, if I am looking for cars, you should show me valuable content on the topic: how I can buy a car, cost, maintenance, what the shopping experience is like, etc.
Both speed, mobile-friendliness, and proper tech infrastructure matter for both engines. However, Microsoft Bing focuses more on anchor text usage. Bing has been known to reward sites with matching anchor text for a page title, which was devalued by Google many years ago.
Make sure you check out these resources for optimizing for various search engines:
- Going Beyond Google: SEO on Other Search Engines
- 7 Alternative Search Engines That Do Social Good
- Embracing Bing Search & Giving It the Attention It Deserves
- DuckDuckGo SEO: What You Should Know
Google Search vs. Microsoft Bing: The Verdict
Both Microsoft Bing and Google satisfy the informational needs of millions of people every day.
They both offer opportunities for your brand to reach new users and put you in front of millions of qualified customers who are looking for information, products, and services.
Optimizing for both search engines is similar. Microsoft Bing is more focused on on-page optimization and incorporates social signals, while Google is more focused on E.A.T. (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness—is a principle Google’s search quality raters use to determine the quality and effectiveness of search results. Quality raters are real people who determine how well Google’s search results meet users’ needs based on the Search Quality Rater Guidelines.) and links.
Microsoft Bing has definitely improved over the last year and is more competitive with Google, especially in its unique features.
That’s why I recommend optimizing for both, to reach the lion’s share of internet searches and maximize visibility.
Source: (Feb. 2023) Google vs Bing: A Detailed Comparison of Two Search Engines (searchenginejournal.com)
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