BING SEARCH OPERATORS CHEAT SHEET

How To Use Bing Search Operators.......................................................................................................10

About This List Of Bing Search Operators............................................................................................11
7 Basic Bing Search Operators To Use With Bing (& Google).............................................................11
The Plus Symbol...................................................................................................................................11
The Minus Symbol................................................................................................................................12
Quotation Marks..................................................................................................................................13
Parentheses............................................................................................................................................13
AND or &..............................................................................................................................................14
NOT or –...............................................................................................................................................14
OR or |...................................................................................................................................................15
Practical Tips On How To Use Bing Search Parameters.......................................................................16
20+ Bing Advanced Search Operators (Some Are Bing-Only).............................................................16
contains:................................................................................................................................................17
ext:.........................................................................................................................................................17
filetype:..................................................................................................................................................19
inanchor:...............................................................................................................................................20
inbody:...................................................................................................................................................22
intitle:....................................................................................................................................................23
instreamset:...........................................................................................................................................24
ip:...........................................................................................................................................................24
loc: or location:.....................................................................................................................................25
language:...............................................................................................................................................26
prefer:....................................................................................................................................................26
site:.........................................................................................................................................................27
feed:.......................................................................................................................................................28
hasfeed:..................................................................................................................................................29
url:.........................................................................................................................................................29
info:........................................................................................................................................................30
related:...................................................................................................................................................31
define:....................................................................................................................................................31
domain:..................................................................................................................................................32
imagesize:..............................................................................................................................................33
The Asterisk Symbol............................................................................................................................34

Introduction
If Bing is your go-to search engine, you should know there are special commands you can add to your
searches to generate way more accurate results: search operators.
I’m going to give you a definitive list that includes every Bing search operator currently in use, clear
instruction on what each one does and an explanation about how to use them all.
Additionally I’ll show you some practical examples that combine search operators to give you ultra-powerful
results from Bing searches!
Table of Contents
 What Are Search Operators?
 Search Operators & Options
 Bing Advanced Search Options

WHAT ARE SEARCH OPERATORS?

If you’ve never heard of search operators before and don’t know what they are, I’ve written a detailed
overview here: What are Search Operators? If you’re pressed for time though, I’ll summarize below.
When you use a search engine to make a search, you often get millions of results. Most of them pretty
accurately match what you’re looking for right?
However, if you’re looking for something very specific, broad searches create a lot of results that you have
to sift through to find a result that specifically answers your needs.
In cases like these, search operators filter out the noise to return laser-targeted results.
So what are they?
Search operators are very powerful commands you add to your queries to tell a search engine to return a
very specific result set. So instead of seeing millions of results for your search, you only see results that
match precisely what you’re looking for.
There are many of them and they can be combined together to make your searches incredibly powerful.

BING ADVANCED SEARCH OPERATORS &

OPTIONS
You can fine tune the results in Bing for any search you make by combining what you’re searching for with
an operator. If you want to refine them even further you can add options.
Operators are like advanced keywords that help to focus your searches. Options are symbols that
further extend searches.
Let’s take a look at the operators that Bing allows you to use first.
OPERATORS
The syntax for all operators must be precise. All operators are followed by a colon. There are no spaces
immediately before or after the colon.

CONTAINS:
The contains: operator focuses Bing results on pages that include links to certain filetypes.
Example: search engine optimization contains:pdf
DEFINE:
Using define: in a Bing search delivers an instant answer for the term you pair it with. It’s effectively a
way to request a definition of a word or phrase, as a type of dictionary function. This is how to use it:
Example: define:zeitgeist

DOMAIN:
domain: limits search results to the specified domain.
Example: domain:sidegains.com seo:
FEED:
feed: returns the URLs for RSS or Atom feeds relating to the search term you request.
Example: feed:link building

FILETYPE:
The filetype: operator only returns pages having a specified file type.
Example: sky diving filetype:pdf
IMAGESIZE:
imagesize: calls results directly from Bing Images. To use it you provide a search term combined with the
imagesize: operator and one of the following options:

imagesize: Function
Option

small Width less than 200 pixels and height less than 200 pixels.

medium Width between 200 pixels and 500 pixels. Height between 200 pixels
and 500 pixels.

large Width greater than 200 pixels. Height greater than 200 pixels.
Example: seo imagesize:large
INANCHOR:
inanchor: lists all pages that include the term that follows it in the anchor text of any links on the indexed
page.
Example: inanchor:sky diving

The word order of the inanchor: text is respected. So in this example, Bing is looking for pages that contain
the anchor text “sky” followed by “diving”.

INBODY:
The inbody: operator lists all pages indexed in Bing that contain the proceeding term within metadata of the
actual page content.
Example: inbody:weather

INSTREAMSET:
instreamset: looks to see if a specific string appears in one or more page properties. It’s similar to intitle:,
inbody:, and inanchor:, albeit more general. However, you can tell it specifically to look at one or all page
properties by placing them in parethesis.
Example: instreamset:(title url):soccer
Other examples might be:
 instreamset:(body):soccer
 instreamset:(anchor):soccer
 instreamset:(url):soccer
 instreamset:(title):soccer

You can also use combinations of any of the above with instreamset: if you need more flexibility than
intitle:, inbody:, and inanchor: provide.

Example: instreamset:(body url title):soccer

INTITLE:
Using the intitle: operator lists all indexed pages that contain the term following it in their metadata title.
So for example, using intitle:seo in Bing returns all sites having the term “seo” in their meta title:
Example: intitle:seo
IP:
Searching Bing with the ip: operator combined with a keyword returns results from indexed pages hosted at
the IP address you pass. address
Example: ip:35.186.243.87 soccer

You’ll notice from the image that this pulls all indexed pages hosted at the specified IP relating to the search
term “soccer”. The search has pulled results from different domains that are hosted on the same server.

LANGUAGE:
The language: operator is useful for keyword searches where you require results in a specific language.
Example: futbol language:es

Reference: Bing Language Codes

SITE:
site: combined with a domain name shows you all the pages from a specific domain indexed in Bing. Below
is a result using it with sidegains.com.
Example: site:sidegains.com

The site: operator only returns subdomain results up to two levels deep. This means it won’t return results
from one.example.of.sidegains.com but will return results them one.example.sidegains.com.

URL:
url: combined with a domain name or a URL shows you whether or not a specific domain or URL is
indexed in Bing. Here’s a result using it with sidegains.com.
Example: url:sidegains.com

BING ADVANCED SEARCH OPTIONS

Search options help to further refine your search results. The following option symbols streamline results
to help you find waht you’re looking for more quickly.

Symbol Example Effect

”“ “search engine Returns pages indexed in Bing that exactly match your
optimization” query. your query must be placed between the quotes.

+ soccer +fifa Returns pages containing all search terms preceded by

the + symbol.

() (soccer clubs Returns indexed pages containing a group of words.

california)

AND or soccer AND teams Returns all indexed pages containing the keyword or
& keyword phrases.

NOT or – soccer -fifa Returns all pages that do not contain the search
terms you specify.

OR or | kindle OR ipad Returns all pages containing either of the search terms
or phrases you specify.
Bing Advanced Search Options

You must capitalize the NOT and OR options when you use them or Bing will ignore them.

How To Use Bing Search Operators

Here is how to refine your search results with the help of Bing
search operators:
1. Type the search operator or a group of search operators into the
search box.
2. Append the keyword or keywords you want to research.
3. Hit enter & enjoy precise and (hopefully) relevant results.

About This List Of Bing Search Operators

This list contains every Bing search operator I could find together
with an example, a screenshot, and my own comment or insight.
I personally tested each operator with both Bing and Google.
The results of my tests were a bit surprising because in many cases
Google returned more relevant results even with Bing-only search
operators.
Anyway, if you want to get more Bing-savvy or Google-savvy, this list
is mandatory reading.

If you are reading this guide, you might be interested in

learning about the search engines that don’t track (privacy search
engines) and alternative search engines. I have a full list of them!

7 Basic Bing Search Operators To Use With Bing (& Google)

Here are basic Bing search operators that will let you modify and refine
your searches. The Boolean operators, such as AND, NOT,
and OR also work in Google Search and Gmail in an identical way, so I
invite you to also check the list of Gmail search operators.
The Plus Symbol

+ lets you find web pages containing the term preceded by the plus
symbol. You can also use this search operator to include some stop
words that are ignored by default (like “end”, “the” or “a”).
+
Example: seo +audit (with a space)
This search operator will display web pages that are related to the word
“seo” and “audit”.
This is how I would search for websites that talk about an SEO audit but
I don’t care if they contain the exact phrase “SEO audit”.
Example: seo+audit (without a space)

The above example will display results that contain the exact word
match to “SEO audit”. This works the same as the quotation marks.
I would use this search command to get the results containing the exact
phrase “SEO audit”.
Note that Google has discontinued the + search operator and it works
with Bing only. To return the same results with Google, simply use
quotation marks.
The Minus Symbol

- lets you exclude web pages containing a specific term or phrase. This
one works in opposition to the plus symbol above.
-
Example: seo -audit
This search command will display web pages containing the word “seo”
but will exclude web pages with the word “audit”.
I would use this command to find web pages that talk about SEO but
don’t include the word “audit”.
Quotation Marks

" " lets you find the exact match to the word put in " ".
""
Example: "technical seo audit"

This search parameter will find web pages that contain the exact phrase
put into quotation marks.
I would use this command to find web pages that specifically talk about
a technical SEO audit.
Parentheses

( ) lets you find or exclude web pages containing a specific word or a

group of specific words.
()
Example: seo (technical OR local)
You will mostly use this to group other operators to control their order
of execution and precedence.
I would use the search command in the example to look for web pages
about either technical or local SEO, or both.
AND or &

AND or & lets you find web pages containing all the phrases or terms
specified. This is a Boolean search operator.
AND
Example: "technical seo audit" AND "content audit"
Example: "technical seo audit" & "content audit"

AND is used by default both by Google and Bing so there is no need to

use it for regular searches. However, it may be useful in combination
with other operators.
I would use this search command to specifically find web pages that
contain the exact matches to both “technical seo audit” and “content
audit”.
Note that the search command "technical seo audit" "content audit" would
provide identical results as both Bing and Google default to AND.
NOT or –
NOT or - lets you exclude web pages containing a specific term or
phrase. This is a Boolean search modifier.
NOT
Example: seo NOT technical
Example: seo -technical

The search parameter NOT can be used interchangeably with - as they do

the exact same thing.
In the example above I searched for web pages about SEO but excluded
web pages with the word “technical”. A beginner SEO might use this
command to look for websites about SEO in general without getting into
technical SEO (yet).
OR or |

OR or | lets you find web pages containing one of the phrases or terms
specified. This is also a Boolean search parameter.
OR or |
Example: seo OR ppc
Example: seo | ppc

This search operator is useful when you want to research multiple topics
without restricting your research to just one.
I would use the search operator in the example above to find web pages
about SEO or PCC or both.

Practical Tips On How To Use Bing Search Parameters

Here are a few practical tips on how to use these basic Bing search
operators correctly:
 All searches are by default AND searches, so you don’t need to
use AND if it’s the only search parameter you need in a given
search. Google does the same.
 Boolean Bing search operators, such as NOT and OR must be
capitalized, or Bing will ignore them and treat them as common
stop words. Google will do the same.
 All stop words and punctuation marks are by default ignored by
Bing. If you want Bing to take notice of them, put them in quotation
marks " " or proceed them by the plus + symbol.
 The preferred order for Boolean operators is: ( ) "
" NOT - + AND & OR |
 OR terms should be placed in brackets when combined with other
search operators as they have the lowest precedence. This of course
applies to Google as well.
Check this Bing help article to learn more about operator precedence.

20+ Bing Advanced Search Operators (Some Are Bing-Only)

Here is the list of 20+ advanced Bing search operators (Bing simply
calls them advanced search keywords).
Note that many of these are Bing search parameters only and they won’t
work with Google. In some cases, however, you will see that some
Bing-specific parameters return better and more relevant results in…
Google.

Under each search operator, there is the into whether it works ( ) or

doesn’t work ( ) with a specific search engine. A light bulb ( )
provides insights on the practical uses of a given command.
 When using these search commands, remember not to put a space
after the colon, or the command won’t work.
This list contains more Bing search parameters than even Bing lists on
its website. By the way, I think they need to update their list!
contains:

This Bing search operator lets you search for pages that have links to the
file type you specified.
contains:
Example: seo contains:pdf

Bing
Google
The example above should return web pages about SEO with links
to PDF files.
Unfortunately, at least in my own experience, this one doesn’t entirely
work as desired in Bing even though this operator is listed on the Bing
website.
In search results returned by Bing, it’s quite hard to find any PDF files
or the PDF files aren’t about SEO.
contains: is not an official Google search operator but it still seems to
provide more relevant results with Google!
ext:

Use ext: to search for web pages with the filename extension specified.
ext:
Example: seo ext:docx
 Bing
Google
This operator is very useful if you want to find URLs that end in a
specific format. It will often return files from website folders, such as
downloads or uploads. The example above will (or rather should)
display web pages with the DOCX file extension.
I’m quite disappointed but this search operator doesn’t work correctly
with Bing even though it is listed in the Bing help section on its
website. Maybe it returns such poor results because there are not
enough relevant search results for this query. I’m not really sure here
and I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.
Take a look at the screenshot showing Bing results for seo ext:docx.
Bing, seriously? With Google, this search command seems to be
working just fine.
Make sure to check my guide to Google Drive search operators.
filetype:
The filetype: search operator is a bit similar to ext: but there are some
differences.
filetype: lets you look for documents based on their specific file type
while ext: looks for URLs ending with a specific file extension.
The filetype: search command returns the results of only one file type.
filetype:
Example: seo audit filetype:pdf

Bing
Google
This search operator may be very useful when you want to find
specific document types in a specific website. To do that you need to
put the website domain after site: and type something like site:seosly.com
filetype:pdf.
This search operator works with file types, such as html, txt, pdf, and the
Office file types (doc, docx, rtf, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx).
It works with Google as well. And it works OK with Bing!
inanchor:

This search operator is supposed to help you find web pages containing
a specific term in the metadata. In this case, it’s the inbound anchor
text.
inanchor:
Example: inanchor: seo
 Bing
Google
This Bing search parameter is supposed to find web pages
containing “seo” in the anchor.
Unfortunately, it returns gobbledygook with Bing while it works
perfectly fine with Google (even though Google has deprecated this
search command).
And again, inanchor: is officially listed in the Bing help section. The
results are a bit funny again.
Can you see what’s below “News about Inanchor:Seo”? Yeah, it’s a link
to another search engine, DuckDuckGo. What does it say about Bing?
I’m not implying anything!
inbody:

This search operator is similar to the one above and is supposed to find
web pages containing a specific term in the metadata. In this case, it’s
the body of the website.
inbody:
Example: inbody:seo
 Bing
Google
This search command should return web pages containing “seo” in
the body.
Unfortunately, the results in Bing are similar to what I got with
inanchor: where only the first result (the link to Moz) is relevant. And,
again, Google seems to have no problems with that.
intitle:

This search operator works similarly to the two above and lets you find
web pages containing a specific term in the metadata. In this case, it’s
the title of the website.
intitle:
Example: intitle: seo audit

Bing
Google
This Bing search keyword will look for web pages that contain the
word “seo” and “audit” in the title. Since this operator is not in
quotation marks, the words may be in any order, not necessarily as
“SEO audit”.
This one works with Google as well. Bing seems to be doing fine this
time too.
instreamset:

This one will find the web pages with a specific word in one or more
page properties mentioned above (title, body, or anchor).
instreamset:
Example: instreamset:(url title):seo

Bing
Google
If you want to narrow down the results to just one or two
properties, just specify them in parentheses, for
example, instreamset:(title url):seo.
It seems to work with Google. With Bing, the results don’t seem to be
very relevant.
ip:

This Bing search operator will display websites hosted at the IP address
specified.
ip:
Example: ip: 66.235.200.145
 Bing
Google
It’s very useful if you are researching a website and want to check
other domains hosted at the same IP (which is the case for shared
hosting plans).
Note that ip: will return only the indexed websites, not all the websites
that are hosted at this IP address. To narrow down your results more,
you can combine it with a keyword.
If I wanted to find other websites relating to the word “seo” and hosted
at the same IP address then I would type ip: 66.235.200.145 seo.
This one doesn’t work with Google.
loc: or location:

This search command allows you to find web pages from a specific
country or region.
loc:
location:
Example: seo loc:us
 Bing
Google
This search operator will find web pages related to “seo” in the US.
Check the list of country, region, and language codes you can use
with loc: in Bing.
It seems to be working with Bing, but not all the results are relevant.
Google has deprecated this search operator.
language:

This search operator will return web pages in a specific language. To use
it correctly, you need to specify the language code.
language:
Example: seo language:pl

Bing
Google
This search command will return results relating to “seo” in the
Polish language.
It doesn’t work perfectly with Bing. Most results are in Polish but there
are still some results in English (like the knowledge panel or the first
result that is Moz).
prefer:

This Bing search parameter allows you to add emphasis to a keyword to

modify the focus of the websites returned.
prefer:
Example: seo prefer:organization

Bing
Google
The above Bing search operator is supposed to look for web pages
related to “seo” but with the focus on websites presenting an
organization.
The search results returned aren’t highly relevant in Bing. The majority
of web pages on the first page are well-known SEO blogs. There is also
a section with news and videos about SEO.
The results that Google returns seem to be more relevant (again) even
though it’s the Bing-only search parameter.
site:

This search operator limits search results to web pages from one specific
domain and its subdomains.
site:
Example: site:seosly.com
Example: olga site:seosly.com
 Bing
Google
This is probably the most often used search parameter among SEOs
who use it mainly to check what web pages of a given website are
indexed. This is a quick way to diagnose the most obvious indexing
problems.
You can use site: with the Boolean operator OR to group results from
different domains. This search operator also allows for finding web
domains, top-level domains, and directories.
You can combine it with one or more search terms to look for web pages
relating to a specific topic.
In the example above I used this search operator to look for the indexed
web pages relating to “olga” on seosly.com.
Check my article on how to check if Google has indexed your site.
feed:

This search command will find websites with RSS or Atom feeds for the
search terms specified.
feed:
Example: feed:seo

Bing
Google
The search command I typed above will find websites that have RSS
or Atom feeds relating to SEO.
It works OK with Bing but Google doesn’t support it.
hasfeed:

This search parameter will look for web pages with an RSS or Atom
feed on a specific website and relating to the terms specified.
hasfeed:
Example: hasfeed:seo
Example: site:moz.com hasfeed:seo

Bing
Google
This will look for web pages that have a feed for “seo”. If you want
to narrow down the results to a specific website you can
use site:moz.com hasfeed:seo.
I’m not very happy with the results Bing displays for this query. Even
though this operator is on the official Bing site, it seems to have been
depreciated. It doesn’t work with Google either.
url:

This Bing search parameter will check if a specific domain or address is

indexed by Bing.
url:
Example: url:
 Bing
Google
It’s a quick way to check if Bing has indexed a given URL address.
I would type url:seosly.com to quickly check if this domain is in the Bing
index.
The difference between url: and site: is that url: finds a specific URL
while site: searches for all web pages, subdomains, and directories of the
domain specified.
This is a Bing-only search parameter. It won’t return relevant results in
Google.
info:

This Bing search operator is supposed to return information that the

search engine has about a given website, such as related pages, external
websites talking about this site, and other related results.
info:
Example: info:moz.com

Bing
Google
It’s very useful to quickly check what Bing or Google know about
the site specified.
This search command seems to work nicely but I needed to refine my
search by clicking on the below.
This one also works with Google.
related:

This search command will display web pages that are similar to a given
web page.
related:
Example: related:moz.com

Bing
Google
It’s very useful if you are researching competition for a given
website and want to learn how Google or Bing categorizes a
website.
This is not an official Bing search operator, so I’m not going to
complain that it doesn’t work perfectly with Bing. However, you can
still find some related web pages and sites to the site specified. With
Google, however, it works perfectly.
define:

This search operator will display the definition of the term specified.
define:
Example: define:seo

Bing
Google
With this command, you can quickly look up the meaning of a word
you’re not sure about.
This search operator works both with Google and Bing. This time (and
at least for the query tested) Bing seems to provide more relevant
results.
domain:

This search command will display results only from the domain
specified.
domain:
Example: domain:moz.com

Bing
Google
It’s useful if you want Bing to display results from one specified
domain only.
This operator doesn’t work with Google. With Google, you simply need
to use site: or place the domain name in quotation marks.
imagesize:

This search operator will return results from the Bing image search. It
lets you look for images of a specific size.
imagesize:
Example: seo imagesize:small
This will return images below 200 pixels in height and width.
Example: seo imagesize:medium
This will return images with width and height between 200 and 500
pixels.
Example: seo imagesize:large
This will display images with both height and width greater than 200
pixels.

Bing
Google
It comes in very useful if you need images of a specific size.
This search operator works in the Google image search as well but you
need to specify the image size precisely instead of “small”, “medium” or
“large”.
The Asterisk Symbol

This operator works as a wildcard that can replace any phrase.

*
Example: quickest * in the world

Bing
Google
It’s very useful when researching for interesting stats or data.
This search operator works OK both with Google and Bing.