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The query "moscow is a beautiful city" does not return any results containing the exact search phrase (compare to Google's response). Is it a bug in Bing and are there any workarounds?

And screenshots:

enter image description here

vs.

enter image description here

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  • I just checked and it works.
    – Mehper C. Palavuzlar
    Commented Sep 15, 2011 at 10:47
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    Please look at the screenshots: bing vs google. All results on the first page from google contain the exact search phrase. No results on the first page from Bing do that. Note also the number of hits: 7.2M (bing) vs 37k (google).
    – Dennis Golomazov
    Commented Sep 16, 2011 at 5:59

7 Answers 7

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The problem is in the market parameter.

See the Bing API 2.0 documentation:

The market parameter is optional. If the parameter is not specified, the API will attempts to determine an applicable market through the use of logic such as the IP address of the request, cookies. and other elements.

Compare two results for the same query using different market option values: en-US vs ru-RU. Each result on the first page of the answer for the en-US market contains the exact query string, while for ru-RU no result does.

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Just put a plus before the first quote:

+"Moscow is a beautiful city"

Click here to try it.

Sometimes this works perfectly. Other times, it lets through a few false positives. Other times, it lets through a lot. But it always seems to work better than anything else you can do (certainly better than any other suggestion here so far).

Another tip: Capitalizing "Moscow" seems to make it work slightly better.

Bing's documentation does claim that putting a phrase in quotes

Returns results that contain the specified phrase, exactly.

Therefore, needing to put a plus at the beginning is clearly a bug - just one of many in Bing that MS apparently doesn't care to fix.

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As far as I have been able to tell over the YEARS, Bing has never worked using quotation marks. Still does not. Always bothered me. One of the main reasons I go back to Google when Bing fails me. If relevant, I use Firefox. My post is as of today's date of August 5, 2014 CE.

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    This contradicts what the other answers say. Do you have a reference?
    – jonsca
    Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 20:55
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    My thoughts exactly. I cannot get Bing quotes to work for exact phrases, except for maybe the first couple of results on page one. I've tried various browser versions, different IP addresses, to no avail. Google works properly for exact phrases, Bing does not.
    – Brain2000
    Commented Jan 13, 2015 at 17:19
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Quotations do search by exact phrase. See the Bing documentation Search effectively that states:

Search for exact phrases by placing the search words within quotation marks. For example, "short evergreen tree."

Check that you don't have unusual settings or filters in your Bing settings.

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  • I see, they search, but seem not to return any results containing the exact phrase. Please look at the screenshots in the comment above. I checked the settings and found no unusual ones.
    – Dennis Golomazov
    Commented Sep 16, 2011 at 6:02
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    Have you tried the "Advanced" link in the search results? (I doubt that will change anything, but you can try.) What country are you in, and language settings? In US-en it is returning results for me that match the exact phrase you used. The next step may be speaking with bing support directly?
    – Mufasa
    Commented Sep 16, 2011 at 14:22
  • Mufasa, thank you for the response. I sorted it out and posted the answer. Language settings are the key.
    – Dennis Golomazov
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 12:46
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There is a simple solution. You can use the inbody: parameter so that Bing does not separate your search string into multiple words.

Try searching in Bing for inbody:Moscow&is&a&beautiful&city

Also works as inbody:Moscow+is+a+beautiful+city

using inbody: parmeter in Bing

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This is what I do:

The only way that the Bing API returns the same results for an exact phrase is to put another double quotes in the query (in REST invokes it seems that is not needed to escape the quotes). I tried first this URL:

https://api.datamarket.azure.com/Bing/Search/Web?Query=%27google%20api%20news%27&$format=json&$top=3

The results were diferent. Next I tried this other:

https://api.datamarket.azure.com/Bing/Search/Web?Query=%27%22google%20api%20news%22%27&$format=json&$top=3

With the second one the results were the same as that in the Bing web search with "google api news" phrase.

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    Links that need a username and password do not offer help. Please post screenshots or just the actual search queries that anyone could type into the services to see result set.
    – Bradley A. Tetreault
    Commented Oct 7, 2012 at 20:40
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Google no longer searches for exact matches when you enclose all terms within quotation marks. It just returns every thing that has both terms but located separately anywhere in the document.

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  • I just found a way to get exact matches (at least with words if not with punctuation marks): To find "French ogival" (with the "French" and the "ogival" actually together), type: 'allintext: "French ogival" '. ...Put the expression "allintext" with a colon, then space, then your term in quotes. It works pretty good. I found it here: lifewire.com/looking-for-specific-phrase-3482479 .
    – user215232
    Commented Apr 18, 2019 at 11:20
  • This is false. And also, this question is not about Google search; it's about Bing search.
    – sfarbota
    Commented May 19, 2022 at 8:02

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