Bing: search - match only exact literal strings?

Question

I'm using PHP and the Bing API to search for certain domainnames. I want only the results that are an EXACT match.

Somehow Bing returns results that do not match exactly.

When I search for :

"www.gebouw.nl"

I sometimes also get results like "www.gprgebouw.nl"

Is there a way to tell Bing to search only for EXACT matches?

Solution

Try adding a plus sign to your query. e.g. +www.gebouw.nl which is %2Bwww.gebouw.nl when url encoded

http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861

http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/ff808438.aspx

Comments

[Dylan]

Nope, still not working on Bing. You can test it for yourself using the standard Bing website. When you search for +"www.gebouw.nl" , you also get : www.ge-bouw.nl , etc.

[nick]

When I go to bing.com/search?q=%2Bwww.gebouw.nl&form=APIPA1 I see 3 results: 2 from www.gebouw.nl and 1 from loopingrecursion.com which scraped this question.

[Andrew]

The plus sign seems to work for me. Regardless of if you have quotes or not around your search term.

[charlie arehart]

I'll note that in 2022, using the + in front of a quoted string did work as the solution for me, finding something that the Bing site would not find if I did NOT use the +. Granted, the original question here was about the API, but this helped me in using the bing.com site--and may help others, so thanks. (And I even tried the example Dylan offered above, and that too worked and did not show the ge-bouw.nl...but I realize that comment was from 11 years ago and things could have changed, in bing or about that site, affecting it appearing in the results.)