I’ve been using Bing as my main search engine for sometime and I’m very happy with it. Within that plain search box lies a lot of power and many ways to search for information. Here I am sharing some of the ways I use Bing on daily bases. You may find these interesting and see that there is more to Bing than just plain old web search.

1. Search For Weather

Just type in the city name followed by forecast

sydney forecast

2. Get Search Results returned in RSS format

Bing can return your results in RSS format. In this example I am searching for “Best Search Engine” and I want my results in RSS format. I can then subscribe to the feed in my feed reader and keep an eye on when search results are updated.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=best+search+engine&format=rss

3. Search Within A Website

With Bing you can search for content on a particular website. For example here I am searching for “Silverilght” on One .NET Way.

site:thereforesystems.com silverlight

4. Exclude a website from your search

Following search for Silverlight will exclude results from One .NET Way

-site:thereforesystems.com silverlight

5. Celebrity Search

Bing has a feature called xRank which keeps track of search volume on celebrities. You can also compare Bing popularity of celebrities. Here I am comparing popularity of Michael Jackson with Jet Li. xRank can be accessed at http://www.Bing.com/xRank

6. Bing Without Background Image

Bing home page by default displays a background image. Here is a sample:

If you don’t want to see the background (and why not?), you can turn it off by going to this address.

http://www.bing.com/?rb=0

7. Search Where results lead to File Type

A site can be searched for all links which further have links to specified file type. For example here I am searching Codeplex and I’d like to see results where I can find pdf files.

codeplex contains:pdf

8. Search For Flight Information

Bing also returns real-time flight information. Following text when typed into Bing search box return information for United flight 660

flight info united 660

9. Search within a country

You can specify a location for your search. Here I am searching for Bill Gates and I want search results from India.

Bill Gates loc:IN

10. Use Bing as a Dictionary

You can definition of any word by simply typing define and then the word. Example

define cyberspace