Bing’s Got Some Useful Search Features
June 11, 2009
The goslings have been fumbling around because web feet don’t equate with Web searching. Nevertheless, we have gathered together six tips that we found particularly useful when running “bings” on the Microsoft search site. Tell your friends to “bing it.” Remember: in the examples below omit the initial and trailing quotation marks.
Tip 1: to see what’s hot in feeds. Enter this string in front of your query: “feed:”. The resulting query looks like this: “feed:Cleveland +”business information”.
Tip 2: this is a direct match for the “other guy’s” syntax. To locate only Adobe PDF documents you use this string in front of your query: “filetype:” The resulting query looks like this: “filetype:ppt +sharepoint”.
Tip 3: this is another direct match for the “other guy’s” syntax. To locate only documents within a particular Web site you use this string in front of your query: “site:” The resulting query looks like this: “site:search +arnoldit.com
Tip 4: this tip is essential if you are looking for hits from a little known or unpopular site like the National Railway Retirement Board. To determine if a Web site is in the Bing index, enter this string in front of your query: “url:”. The resulting query looks like this: “url:marad.gov”
Tip 5: this tip is popular with the goslings who enjoy online music. To locate hits on sites that have links to specific filetypes, precede the query with the string “contains:” The resulting query looks like this: “contains:mp3”
Tip 6: Boolean operators are available. Use “+” for AND and “-“ for NOT.
Remember to put bound phrases such as “White House” in quotes to minimize false drops.
We think the system has some useful features. You can get other tips for running bings on the new Microsoft system at these locations:
- Help for the system is in tiny gray type at the foot of the Bing splash page. You can go directly to the online information pages by clicking here.
- MalekTips has some useful tips here.
- Digital Inspiration has some interesting tips here. I quite liked tip 1 so the full Bing is available to users where access may be limited in some way.
Remember don’t say the “other guy’s” name when you mean Web search. Say, “Bing it.” I am working on making this word an active part of my vocabulary.
Stephen Arnold, June 11, 2009
Comments
One Response to “Bing’s Got Some Useful Search Features”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
[…] Here are some useful tips on using Bing from Stephen E. Arnold at Beyond Search: […]