Bing is a search engine that offers users a variety of advanced search operators to help them find what they’re looking for. Here are eight tips for using Bing’s advanced search operators to get the most out of your searches.

  1. Use the “AND” operator to combine different search terms into one query. For example, if you’re looking for information about both cars and trucks, you could use the “AND” operator to combine the two terms into one query. This will return results that include both car and truck information.
  2. Use the “OR” operator to choose between two different search terms. For example, if you want results that include either cars or trucks, you could use the “OR” operator to choose between the two options. This will return results that include either car or truck information, but not both at the same time.
  3. Use parentheses () around multiple search terms to limit results to specific types of content. For example, if you want results that are only articles about cars, you could use parentheses around “car.” This will return only articles that are about cars in Bing’s database.
  4. Use quotation marks ("") around a word or phrase to limit its appearance in search results. For example, if you want only articles with the word “car” in them, you could use quotation marks around “car.” This will limit all results returned by Bing’s algorithm to just those containing “car.”
  5. Use square brackets [] around a group of keywords to indicate that they should be treated as one term when searching for content on Bing websites and apps (including Bing Search). For example, if you’re looking for information about Ford vehicles but don’t want any other brands included in your results (except Ford), you could use square brackets [] around Ford and exclude all other brands from your query (for example [“Ford”]). This would return only Ford-related content from all sources on Bing websites and ..

Google may still be the top search engine, but Bing is starting to stand on its own. Bing has many of the same search operators offered by Google, but it has a few tricks you won’t find elsewhere.

Master these search operators and you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for, and do it faster. These search operators will also work in Yahoo, which is now powered by Bing.

The Basics

Bing’s basic search operators work similarly to Google’s. Search for an exact phrase by surrounding it with quotes:

Omit words with the NOT or minus sign operators. For example, if you wanted to search for smartphones, but didn’t want any results mentioning the iPhone, you’d use one of the following:

Use the OR or | operator to find pages that contain one word or another. For example, search for pages about Android or iPhone using one of the following:

Use the site: operator to search within a specific website, just like on Google. For example, search for Bing-related content on How-To Geek with this query:

File Type

Bing can search for files of a specific type using the filetype: operator, just like Google. For example, search for PDF files about Bing with the following query:

Bing doesn’t index all file types. If you wanted to find public domain MP3 files, the following query wouldn’t do anything:

Use the following query and you’ll get pages containing the words “public domain” that link to MP3 files:

Word Closeness

If you type a search such as “bing awesome,” you’ll get pages that have the words “bing” and “awesome” anywhere on the page, even if they’re far apart. Use the near: operator to restrict the distance between search phrases. For example, the following query only returns pages where the words “bing” and “awesome” are within five words of each other:

Use the ip: operator to search websites located at a specific IP address. Here’s how to search How-To Geek’s current IP address:

Specify a Location or Language

Use the loc: operator to specify a specific location. For example, the following query returns tourist attractions in the UK:

Use the language: operator to specify a specific language.

For a full list of location and language codes, visit Microsoft’s website.

Feeds

Use the feed: operator to find Web feeds that contain a word. You could use this to find blogs about a topic. For example, find feeds that contain the word “geek” with the following query:

If you don’t want to find a feed itself, just a website that has a feed, use the hasfeed: operator:

The real power comes when you start combining search operators, stitching together complex queries out of several different operators.