How to apply keyword search in Bing V7 Search API

Nidhya 0

I would like to use keyword search using the advanced search options such as AND, OR, +, () as per this page in bing search V7 API. It works fine when there are articles related to the given query and applied keyword, but when there are no relevant articles, I'm getting results that are irrelevant to my query.

For example, when I search for "HONGKONG KINGRAY CLOCKS LIMITED" AND ("Money Laundering") it results in articles related to Hong Kong and money laundering.

Search API: https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search?q="HONGKONG KINGRAY CLOCKS LIMITED" AND ("Money Laundering")&response_filter=News,Webpages

So my question is, how to avoid getting such loosen results and get only relevant search result? I want to get empty result if there are no relevant news or webpages.

Thanks in advance!

Alexa Sa 65 Reputation points

2023-09-03T17:01:49.32+00:00
To perform more precise searches using advanced search operators like AND, OR, +, and () in the Bing Search API (V7), you can follow these guidelines:

Use the Correct Syntax: Ensure that you are using the correct syntax for advanced search operators. In your example, the syntax appears to be correct.

Query Expansion: The Bing Search API may use query expansion to provide more results when it doesn't find exact matches. To restrict the results to exact matches, you can try placing your search terms in double quotes:

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q="HONGKONG KINGRAY CLOCKS LIMITED" AND ("Money Laundering")

By placing quotes around your search terms, you are telling the search engine to look for the exact phrase "HONGKONG KINGRAY CLOCKS LIMITED" and consider it as a single query.

Filter by Relevance Score: After receiving the results, you can filter them based on relevance scores. The Bing Search API provides relevance scores for each result. You can set a threshold for relevance and only consider results with a high enough score as relevant.

Evaluate and Discard Irrelevant Results: After receiving the results, you can programmatically analyze the content of each result and filter out irrelevant ones based on specific criteria. This requires some natural language processing (NLP) to determine if the content is related to your query.

Here's an example of how you can filter results based on relevance scores in Python using the Bing Search API:

python Copy code import requests # Define your API key and endpoint api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY" endpoint = "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v7.0/search" # Define your query query = '"HONGKONG KINGRAY CLOCKS LIMITED" AND ("Money Laundering")' # Make the API request headers = {"Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key": api_key} params = {"q": query, "responseFilter": "News,Webpages"} response = requests.get(endpoint, headers=headers, params=params) # Check the response status code if response.status_code == 200: data = response.json() # Filter results based on relevance score (adjust the threshold as needed) relevant_results = [result for result in data.get("webPages", {}).get("value", []) if result.get("score", 0) >= 0.7] # Now relevant_results contains only the relevant results else: print("Error:", response.status_code, response.text)

In this example, we filter results with a relevance score greater than or equal to 0.7 as relevant. You can adjust the threshold according to your requirements.

Remember that achieving perfect relevance in search results can be challenging, especially when dealing with specific queries. You may need to fine-tune your query and filtering criteria to improve the relevance of your results further.

Nidhya 0

Thanks @Alexa Sa for the response. We are using the https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search?q endpoint, in this we are NOT getting any score to use.

"webPages": {
        "webSearchUrl": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=(%22HONGKONG+KINGRAY+CLOCKS+LIMITED%22)+%2b(%22Racketeering%22)",
        "totalEstimatedMatches": 1260,
        "value": [
            {
                "id": "https://api.bing.microsoft.com/api/v7/#WebPages.0",
                "name": "HONGKONG KINGRAY CLOCKS LIMITED :: Hong Kong :: OpenCorporates",
                "url": "https://opencorporates.com/companies/hk/2312198",
                "isFamilyFriendly": true,
                "displayUrl": "https://opencorporates.com/companies/hk/2312198",
                "snippet": "HONGKONG KINGRAY CLOCKS LIMITED Company Number 2312198 Status Live Incorporation Date 26 November 2015 (almost 7 years ago) Company Type Private company limited by shares Jurisdiction Hong Kong Previous Names.",
                "dateLastCrawled": "2022-10-31T09:41:00.0000000Z",
                "language": "en",
                "isNavigational": true
            }]}

1 answer

romungi-MSFT 46,476 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-08-25T11:24:03.3333333+00:00

@Nidhya Try adding "+" before the second part of the search term after AND, I have tried it through bing.com and API and it does not show any results.

Using postman:

With postman, I would be careful while using + since it does not encode correctly on my version. I found this issue from postman repo which suggested using encoded value of + and it works exactly as bing.com response.

Originally, I think the precedence's came into play, so the results were showing any of the two search terms. With + sign you can be sure that the query does not ignore any terms that you would like to search together. Thanks!!

If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.
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1 person found this answer helpful.
Nidhya 0 Reputation points

2023-08-28T05:05:05.43+00:00

Thanks for the prompt answer and yes we are using + sign also, sorry for missing it out earlier and opening the thread again. We are already using the + sign in our app and encoding it. The scenario I'm facing can be seen distinctly seen with this query.

Query: https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search?q=("HONGKONG KINGRAY CLOCKS LIMITED") AND %2B("Criminal" OR "Fraud")&response_filter=News,Webpages

The api results in few webpages that doesn't have the keywords "criminal" or "fraud" but the web search result doesn't show these articles. Is there any other way to filter out such responses or am I missing out something?

Really appreciate your help!

Thank you!

romungi-MSFT 46,476 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-09-01T09:00:52.95+00:00

Try the following query:

https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search?q=("HONGKONG KINGRAY CLOCKS LIMITED" AND %2B(("Criminal") OR ("Fraud")))

I don't know if the above company you are referring to actually has any history with respect to the additional search items your included. The above query does not give any results.

If I include any infamous companies, like "King****** airlines" I see some results with the terms as mentioned. The company name and the additional words like "criminal" or "fraud" in them.

romungi-MSFT 46,476 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-09-03T15:31:14.2533333+00:00

Nidhya I hope the above responses helped? It would be great if you could accept the same as answer if it was useful. Thanks!!

Nidhya 0 Reputation points

2023-09-04T01:26:18.6733333+00:00

Thanks @romungi-MSFT for the answer! But it looks like bing search result differs for us. For the above query, I still get like 1k+ results. And yes, when we search for person or companies that have articles related to the keywords, it works fine, but as I mentioned earlier for us the main issue is, when the query doesn't have any relevant article we don't want any results to be returned which is not happening:(

romungi-MSFT 46,476 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-09-04T05:00:59.0633333+00:00

If I search the same, i do not see any results. Please see screen shot below:

I think the case of "AND" and "OR" seems to be the issue here. If I use smaller case "and" and "or" the results seems to be consistent. I am not sure if this is a bug in the service or it is working as intended.

Nidhya 0 Reputation points

2023-09-05T01:57:40.61+00:00

ya, thanks for your help, @romungi-MSFT I also raised a support ticket to bing and they came back replying product team is aware of this issue but they cannot provide a better suggestion than using existed supported query parameters to optimize this situation at the moment.

I will try for other ways to filter out irrelevant results.
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