Now that Bing is available for use outside Microsoft, here are some quick tips and tricks that will help you do more with Bing.com.
1. Use the full version of Bing
If you are using Bing outside North America, chances are that you seeing a localized version of Bing that may be missing some features. For instance, the Indian version of Bing.com doesn’t have search history and the image on the Bing home page here is not interactive as in the US version.
To explore the full version of Bing, go to this page and set English – US as your default region. You can now enjoy all the Bing features from anywhere.
2. Track Companies from the IE Favorites Bar
If you search for a company stock (e.g. GOOG or MSFT), Bing will automatically create a web slice for that company which you may then add to IE 8 and track the performance directly from the favorites bar. You need Internet Explorer 8 to try this feature.
3. Watch Preview of Hulu Videos outside US
Hulu hosts some popular popular TV shows but the problem is that you can only watch these videos if your computer has US based IP address.
However, Bing lets you watch shot previews of Hulu video even outside US. Just search for any TV show episode on Bing Videos (see example) and hover the mouse over any of the video thumbnail to watch a short clip.
4. Save and Email search results
With Bing, you can save your search history on to a local folder inside Bing or to your Windows Skydrive account. Alternatively, you may send your search queries to a friend via email or publish them on your Facebook wall via Bing. You’ll need Silverlight to share queries in Bing.
5. RSS Feeds of Search Results
Unlike Google or Yahoo, Bing offers RSS feeds for their web search results that you can subscribe to inside any feed reader. Your browser should be able to auto-detect the RSS feed of Bing pages or you can append &format=rss to any Bing search URL and convert it into a feed.
This RSS feature is not available for Image or Video search in Bing.
6. Find Pages That Link to MP3 Files or Documents
Bing (and Live Search) supports a unique "contains" search operator that lets you find web pages that contain links to particular file types.
For instance, a search like susan boyle contains:mp3 will show pages that are about the British singer and that also link to MP3 files. Replace mp3 with doc to search pages that contain links to Word Documents.
For more tips on software and web apps, check our popular how-to guides.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/bing-tips/8931/
Reader Comments
very nice especially RSS Feeds of Search Results….
Written by Sachin on 06.01.09
Thanks for sharing the bing tips at the earliest…
Written by Fasil on 06.01.09
i noticed that real time quick data, like temperature in delhi, flight status,and currency conversion…which work like a charm on google, dont work on bing
Written by ranjith on 06.01.09
Thanks for the infos and the tips, Amit. Here in France we are lucky enough to have localized version of Bing with all features. Looks nice up to now; like for all of us, discovering remains a true pleasure.
Written by Transcontinental on 06.01.09
This is a great info amit.. Keep posting about bing.. Bing the bing..
Written by Indian on 06.01.09
@ Ranjit,
1. Temperature in delhi, delhi temperature works for me.
2. Currency conversion workd for like this: 1 USD In INR
Actually BING suggested it ;)
Written by Praveen Ratna Deepak on 06.01.09
Thanks for sharing useful tips for Bing.com, I experience Bing is using the same data as what we get from Google in terms of rankings.
Written by Afzal Khan on 06.01.09
@ranjith Are you using the US version of Bing? I can search for Delhi temperature and currency conversion just fine…
Written by Jonathan Wong on 06.01.09
With the advent of Bing.com, other search engines better watch out. Hope we will have a healthy competition between the search engines. Bing seems to look like a search on the fly.
Written by iWrite2Know on 06.01.09
“Unlike Google or Yahoo, Bing offers RSS feeds for their web search results that you can subscribe to inside any feed reader.”
That’s not true. Yahoo! Search has offered RSS feeds for all searches since quite a long time.
Written by Ankur Banerjee on 06.01.09
I tend to agree with you that Microsoft could have gotten this right, finally. next steps: make bing default search from desktop and other office apps etc – they know all that.
Written by FirstBallSix on 06.01.09
Not sure if this works, but if you want to view Hulu videos and you’re outside of the U.S., you could always go to MSN TV. They offer many episodes online from Hulu, and other networks too. link
I’m not sure if it works, but it’s worth a try.
Written by Quikboy on 06.02.09
Quikboy – yes, we can watch Hulu video via MSN TV but the geographic restrictions still apply so it’s Hulu remains unavailable for non-US people.
Written by Amit on 06.02.09
Thank You Amit.
Bing and Windows 7 are cool.
Things are getting better at Microsoft.
Written by Nelson DSouza on 06.02.09
“Unlike Google or Yahoo, Bing offers RSS feeds for their web search results that you can subscribe to inside any feed reader.”
This is incorrect for Google as well. Google has offered RSS feeds since October ‘08. It’s part of their Google Alerts service, which also allows email subscriptions when search results change.
Written by Stephen Cleary on 06.02.09
Thanks for the details.
Search using particular file type is also available in google.its not unique to bing.
in google filetype: keyword has to be used
susan boyle filetype: mp3 gave better results
Written by arun on 06.03.09
Arun – The contains: operator is different from filetype: operator – the former lets you find web pages that link to a particular file type while the latter is for finding files with that particular extension.
Written by Amit on 06.03.09
@Amit,@Arun, Both Contains and Filetype operators are very useful. In fact I would like google to have an option for the contains operator
@Stephen, The point is Bing offers it to you directly on the search results page whereas the search feed is not directly available on the results page.
Written by Debjit Saha on 06.03.09
The rss feeds for the web search is the best in Bing …Thanks for the bing Tips and Tricks
Written by RevathiSankaran on 06.03.09
Ahh..Thanks. These are going to be helpful.
Written by Zubin on 06.04.09
I think bing is more than a search engine. There are many search engine on internet but when I used bing there is somthing new in it. Has US got the full version only or UK aswel anybody know?
Written by Aditya on 06.07.09
How do i integrate Bing in Opera 9.6 and Google chrome 2 browser?
Written by Saurya Sengupta on 06.10.09
Does any one know how to control the number of entries in the RSS feed format? I always get 10 records by default. Using my browser it uses cookies to remember I want 20 or 50 answers per page, but if I just call the URL via an http call outside of my browser, is there a parameter to control this?
Like …..&format=rss&recordsperpage=50
?
Written by olivier on 06.10.09