Bing and the Plus Sign
November 16, 2011
Google’s decision to name its social product Google+ was interesting. Non text characters are difficult to search. Many systems use ubiquitous characters like a dot or a minus sign as an “operator”. An operator in this sense tells the system to perform a function such as performing a Boolean NOT operation. Google dropped support for its Boolean AND operator which was the plus sign.
We learned from Boolean Black Belt that Microsoft Bing is Boolean AND friendly. And, the operator is the + sign. “Bing’s Semantic Search, Phonetics and Undocumented Operator” revealed this factoid on November 14, 2011.
The write up added this comment: “the +/Plus sign was serving to remove Bing’s attempt at semantic search and only return results with the exact terms I searched for.” The author then noted:
Now that I am on the lookout for Bing’s semantic search, I’ve noticed that sometimes Bing will slip in semantic search results without giving you the “Including results for ____ / Do you want results for _____” heads-up that lets you know Bing has included results with terms you didn’t actually search for that Bing thinks is related and relevant.
The article contains a number of annotated screen shots. The take away is that Bing has some useful search features. We agree.
Stephen E Arnold, November 16, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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[…] Bing and the Plus Sign Beyond Search: We learned from Boolean Black Belt that Microsoft Bing is Boolean AND friendly. And, the operator is the + sign. “Bing’s Semantic Search, Phonetics and Undocumented Operator” revealed this factoid on November 14, 2011. […]